When Mayor Eric Adams named Hassan Naveed to lead New York City’s Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes, he charged Mr. Naveed with “combating the scourge of hate” wherever he found it.
Mr. Naveed said he found it in Mr. Adams’s City Hall.
During his year-and-a-half as executive director, he “experienced repeated discrimination on the basis of his Muslim religion and his South Asian ethnicity,” according to a lawsuit Mr. Naveed filed late Tuesday against Mr. Adams and New York City.
Mr. Naveed claims he was subject to a “hostile work environment,” in violation of the city’s and state’s human rights law. Mr. Adams says Mr. Naveed was fired in April 2024 for good reason.
“This individual was an at-will employee who was let go for poor job performance, plain and simple, and not terminated because of his identity, religion or views,” Kayla Mamelak Altus, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said in a statement. “Any suggestion otherwise is absurd. We will respond in court, where we are confident these claims will be disproven.”
In the suit, Mr. Naveed said the discriminatory behavior by Mr. Adams and his staff members grew “particularly pronounced” after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, when he said he was “singled out and scrutinized by his superiors” because of his Muslim identity.
Two of his superiors at the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, one of whom is named as a defendant in the suit, took him aside and asked him his thoughts on “beheaded babies,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
After some of Mr. Adams’s aides recirculated what Mr. Naveed considered “anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian sentiments” on social media, Mr. Naveed and other Muslim staff members attended an Oct. 23, 2023, meeting with Mr. Adams to raise their concerns.
Mr. Adams said Muslims were experiencing hate because they had failed to adequately condemn Hamas, according to Mr. Naveed, and he compared pro-Palestine marches to “Klu Klux Klan protests,” he said, using an incorrect spelling.
“I don’t know the difference between a Palestinian, Pakestinian, Arab, Muslim, I have no idea,” the suit also quotes him as saying. Mr. Naveed said he has a recording of the meeting but declined to immediately share the audio.
The lawsuit comes amid a mayoral election marked by accusations of Islamophobia. Zohran Mamdani, the Queens assemblyman who is running to become New York City’s first Muslim mayor, is currently polling more than 10 points ahead of Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor and Democrat whose campaign tactics have included rhetoric that some of his party brethren have characterized as anti-Muslim. Mr. Adams has endorsed Mr. Cuomo and recently warned of “Islamic extremism” coming to New York City.
In September, Mr. Adams met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations and in an ensuing statement, thanked him “for defending the western world and our way of life.”
Mr. Naveed supports Mr. Mamdani’s candidacy, but said the timing of the lawsuit just before the election is coincidental.
He was fired in April 2024, with his supervisors telling him he had failed to submit an annual report that he says he submitted multiple times. His dismissal prompted an open letter of protest from dozens of Muslim organizations and council members.
In his suit, Mr. Naveed said the administration excluded him from meetings about hate crime and also excluded the Council on American-Islamic Relations of New York and the Arab American Association of New York.
Afaf Nasher, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of New York, said that while she was not privy to internal City Hall discussions, “a number of people did come to me from the community and have said, CAIR-NY is being excluded.”
She also said that other Muslim City Hall employees had told her the environment felt hostile after Oct. 7.
A spokeswoman for the Arab American Association did not respond to requests for comment.
Shahana Hanif, the city’s first Muslim councilwoman, praised Mr. Naveed’s work and said his complaints about the Mr. Adams and his administration rang true.
“After Oct. 7, his response of compassion was lacking, and I would say it was for all the communities impacted,” Ms. Hanif said. “He did not present us with empathy, nor say ‘Hey, look, I have Hassan, who has been not just in this administration but in the previous administration, and we need to work together.’”
The lawsuit also accuses Mohamed Bahi, the mayor’s former chief Muslim community liaison who recently pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud, of vowing to withhold $400,000 in hate crime funding from a prominent Arab organization after it expressed reluctance to sign onto a letter that said criticisms of Israel amounted to antisemitism.
Mr. Naveed said he reported Mr. Bahi’s threat as a potential ethical violation, prompting an internal investigation.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Investigation declined to comment.
“I never had authority to pull anyone’s funding nor even allowed to grant funding to any organization,” Mr. Bahi said in a text message on Tuesday. “I was a Muslim liaison only, I did not deal with any grants or contracts from the city.”
Mr. Naveed’s suit also asserted that Mr. Bahi sent a voice note to a Muslim staff member stating that Mr. Adams “does not want to meet with anyone who talks about Gaza or Palestine because it will not be productive.”
Mr. Bahi, in a text message, effectively reaffirmed the sentiment.
“There were numerous meetings in City Hall, even amongst staffers, with the mayor about Gaza/Palestine issue,” Mr. Bahi said. “No one was denied a meeting or conversation but it was known that the mayor had his position and he was adamant about it. The Muslim community was not happy about that position and having the same conversation about it won’t be productive.”
But Mr. Bahi disputed the notion that Islamophobia was a problem at City Hall, noting that the administration made accommodations for Muslim workers for Friday midday prayer.
“I think it’s a very subjective argument to make, and depends how one defines Islamophobia,” Mr. Bahi said.
Dana Rubinstein covers New York City politics and government for The Times.
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