The Washington Metro bomb plot was consigned to lesser media attention in the last week of the electoral campaign. But reporting on Farooque Ahmed, the 34-year-old Pakistani-American residing in Ashburn, Va., who was stung by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the Metro affair, provided a fascinating glimpse of local mosque life. According to the Washington Post, which ran the story in its October 30 Metro section (in a case that has national security relevance), Ahmed was “a firebrand whose conservative views sometimes clashed with others at the Sterling mosque where he worshiped.”

Ahmed, whose media images show him with the characteristic untrimmed beard favored by Muslim fundamentalists, attended the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS). The newspaper said Ahmed “objected to the fact that men and women prayed together and demanded, without success, that women be relegated to an upstairs room . . . . Many still remember a nasty shoving match with a boy who he felt was too noisy and was dressed inappropriately for prayer. ‘He was very angry and tried really to fight with him,’ said the deputy imam, Abdur Rafaa Ouertani. Ouertani pulled Ahmed off the boy, took him aside and admonished him. ‘I noticed a lot of anger,’ he said. ‘For most of the people at the center, this is what they remember about him. This “show.” It was unfortunate.’ ”