I was trying to finalise a cell phone charger deal with a 20ish boy when I noticed, on my side of the counter, a yellow and red sticker warning the ‘Qadianis’ from entering the shop.

I asked him to return my phone that he had put on the charging device he was going to sell me.

I looked around and saw that most shops bore the same stickers on the glass windows or doors. Of course I’d heard about this, but to see them in such huge numbers was astounding, to say the least.

I tried looking for a shop without one, and went to the first I found. I hurriedly bought the charger, from a bearded salesman, wondering why he didn’t have the sticker.

Instinctively, I came back to the first shop, rather the encroached khokha of the shop, and asked the boy if he had deliberately pasted the sticker or did someone randomly put it. He said he’d put it himself ("apni marzi se lagaya hai").

I asked him how could he tell a ‘Qadiani’ from a non-Qadiani customer. He said, "Yes, but they know they are not welcome here!"

"But aren’t you doing business. Why do you want to exclude people? Does it not affect your sales?"

At that moment, another boy with a thick black beard, presumably belonging to the same shop and listening to the conversation, came forward and emphatically said: "It does not matter. Rizq to khuda ne daina hai (The sales are in the hands of God). Even if we lose two out of a hundred customers, so what!"

The first boy nodded in agreement.

I wasn’t sure if they both had in mind customers who would not do business with them because of these stickers. Actually I wasn’t sure if there were any such customers.

I was now looking at the second boy mostly. "Do you know the constitution of Pakistan has declared them non-Muslim?"

"Yes, I know!"

"Yet, you don’t want to let them live as human beings, and do their day-to-day business?" I ask.

"They are already into big businesses," the second boy responds.

"Why pick them in this manner?" I persist.

"Because, you see, they are more dangerous (khatarnak) than Christians or Hindus. They have moved out of the fold of Islam." It is the second boy who is doing the talking mostly.

Sensing that an older bearded man in the shop behind the counter was getting a little jittery, I try a last question: "Do you realise when you consider or call them khatarnak, there are others who go to the extent of picking arms against them, burning them, killing them…"

"But Muslims too are burnt. Musalmanon ke saath boht kuch ho raha hai. Un ko bhi jalaya jaata hai (Muslims are suffering a lot. They too are burnt). Last year when the Christians were attacked [he was probably referring to the Youhanabad Church attack], they killed two Muslims," the second boy became thoughtful as he spoke, the sense of Muslim victimhood writ large on his face.

As I came out, I found that some comparatively posh shops towards the front did not display the anti-Ahmadi stickers.

I was reminded of the recent overwhelming response on the social media, greeting the prime minister’s decision to rename the Quaid-i-Azam University’s Physics Centre to ‘Professor Abdus Salam Centre for Physics’.

I was also reminded of how one of our activist friends narrated that she had seen these stickers in one of Township’s markets a couple of years back and had gone to the police station and complained. The concerned police officer had brought his force to the market and forcibly removed all the stickers, she told.

I came back with so many questions.

How will the naming of a centre after an Ahmadi nobel laureate or removing anti-Ahmadi stickers from outside shops change mindsets? Do these people at the Hafeez Centre know the role of ‘Qadiani’ votes in the making of this country? Do they know who Dr Abdus Salam was? Does a state, that began the process of indoctrination, know how to undo it? If we allow this sectarian argument, where will it end? I shudder.