A city imam’s comments disputing the Holocaust may cost his mosque $1,000 in state funding.

Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin is seeking to rescind a grant he requested for the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica, Queens, after he learned yesterday that the mosque’s spiritual leader, Sheik Fadhel Al-Sahlani, has publicly questioned the Nazis’ murder of 6 millions Jews during World War II.

Sheik Al-Sahlani told The New York Sun in January that he thought the number of Jews killed had been exaggerated. “The numbers which have been mentioned are too much,” he said then, although he acknowledged that the killing of Jews had been “an injustice.” The imam also supported President Ahmadinejad of Iran in his call for a scholarly conference on the genocide that would include noted Holocaust deniers.

“I find this both offensive and outrageous,” Mr. McLaughlin said yesterday in a statement issued through his chief of staff. The funding for the Al-Khoei Benevolent Foundation, the Islamic center’s parent organization, was disclosed in a 340-page list of Assembly allocations for 2005 under a “community project fund.” The list was released earlier this month by the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center for New York State Policy.

The grant earmarked for the Al-Khoei mosque is one of thousands, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, that state lawmakers give out to community organizations in “pork-barrel” spending each year. Mr. McLaughlin secured the money for the Islamic center last June, and it has not yet been disbursed. After his office was told of Sheik Al-Sahlani’s comments yesterday, Mr. McLaughlin said he called the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee to try to get the grant withdrawn. He was also preparing to send a letter of protest to the imam today.

“If these remarks are accurate, they are inflammatory and appear to be a disservice to the congregants,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “It would appear that many of our democratic goals of tolerance, understanding, and compassion have been replaced by hatred, exclusion, and fear.” The assemblyman, a Democrat, is also the head of the Central Labor Council, whose offices were raided by the FBI on suspicion of corruption last month. He has denied wrongdoing.

Sheik Al-Sahlani did not return calls for comment yesterday. An education official at the Islamic center, Muhsin Alidina, said the mosque had requested the grant to fund an after-school program. Mr. Alidina expressed disappointment that the grant would be rescinded, saying that without the money, the after-school program likely would not open. “If the assemblyman feels he wants to withdraw his funds, it’s his prerogative,” Mr.Alidina said. “It’s his right. That’s his privilege, I guess.”

The imam’s remarks came after Mr. Ahmadinejad ignited an international firestorm by saying late last year that the Holocaust was a “myth,” and that Israel should be “wiped off the map.” He has intensified his verbal attacks on Israel in the months since.

Mr. McLaughlin’s chief of staff, Phyllis Shafran, said that the assemblyman had denounced Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statements at a rally sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council last fall.

Mr. McLaughlin secured more than $40,000 in community grants last year for a diverse array groups that includes the Holocaust Resource Center, the Boys and Girls Club, and the Sikh Cultural Society. Ms. Shafran said the Al-Khoei foundation had “fulfilled all rules and regulations” in formally requesting the funds.

The director of the New York branch of the Anti-Defamation League, Joel Levy, applauded Mr. McLaughlin for seeking to rescind the Islamic center’s grant. “Now that he’s better informed, he wants to see that the money is not used inappropriately,” Mr. Levy said.

The situation has highlighted the need for more openness and transparency in the state Legislature’s allocation of funds, the director of the Empire Center, E.J. McMahon, said. Mr. McMahon has called for changes in the current process in which the thousands of community grants allocated each year are lumped into the state’s overall budget, not singled out as line items. Thus, he said, in the case of a grant like the one to the Al-Khoei mosque, “the Legislature has an alibi for voting for it without knowing what it was.”