The glorious, several hundred feet tall minaret of Khalid Masjid, in one of Lahore’s peaceful residential areas, looks over a courtyard that once used to be a calm parking space for the namazi (prayer men). But today, it is populated by armed watchmen, posted in different corners of the mosque like flagpoles. The place still appears ‘calm’ (read quiet), but the presence of guards with their double-barreled guns pointed in the air and the sight of barricades at entry and exit points is menacing, to say the least.