No sooner had the New York Times launched its series on the Imam of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge than the phone rang at The New York Sun. It was Devorah Halberstam, the mother of Aaron "Ari" Halberstam, a 16-year-old rabbinical student gunned down on the Brooklyn Bridge on March 1, 1994. She was calling to say that Monday would be the 12th anniversary of the murder of her son and that the mosque the Times was extolling as a seat of peaceable Islam was the place from which Rashid Baz set out on the shooting spree that claimed her son.

As the Times ran out its series, we waited for some mention of this fact. We were interested to read that the Imam at the center of the reporter's story, Sheik Reda Shata, "is," as the Times reporter wrote, "neither a firebrand nor a ready advocate of progressive Islam. Some of his views would offend conservative Muslims; other beliefs would repel American liberals. He is in many ways a work in progress, mapping his own middle ground between two different worlds."

The second installment of the Times series related that "Imams like Mr. Shata - men who embrace American freedom and condemn the radicals they feel have tainted their faith - rarely make the news." Yet the Times also reported: "When Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed by Israelis in March 2004, Mr. Shata told hundreds who gathered at a memorial service in Brooklyn that the 'lion of Palestine has been martyred.'" Further, the Times notes, "in another sermon, the imam exalted a young Palestinian mother, Reem Al-Reyashi, who blew herself up in 2004 at a crossing point between Gaza and Israel, killing four Israelis. Mr. Shata described the woman as a martyr." An aide to Mr. Shata told us that the Imam was unavailable for comment by our deadline.

In the third and last installment of the Times series, we searched yet again - but in vain - for a mention of Rashid Baz and the fact that on March 1, in 1994, Baz opened fire on a white van carrying rabbinical students, including Halberstam, onto the Brooklyn Bridge and that on March 5 Halberstam died from the shots. It was an act of terrorism that shocked the city as few events have. Baz was convicted of Halberstam's murder in December 1994, and the circumstances deserve to be remembered...