Pakistan, Sept. 17 -- Pakistan has always had an uneasy relationship with the promises it made to itself. Some were written into the Constitution, some spoken from the floor of the Constituent Assembly, and one was stitched rather beautifully into the national flag. The white stripe was meant to stand for those who would never be the majority but would remain no less Pakistani for that. It was a simple idea, almost innocent in its clarity: that the state would belong equally to those whose faith differed from the dominant one.

History, as it often does in this part of the world, complicated the sentence.

This month, an Ahmadi man was shot dead in Mandi Bahauddin while returning from his workshop. Police are investigating what they belie...