Our tour of questionable Amy Klobuchar earmarks takes us to the north side of Minneapolis today. It’s a location where U.S. Sen. Klobuchar once proposed (p. 12) to invest $882,000 of federal taxpayer money in developing a new building on the site of an existing mosque. It does not appear that the grant went through.
This building on North Lyndale Avenue does double duty as the home of the Masjid An-Nur mosque and the related social service nonprofit Al-Maa’uun.
To be clear, upfront: neither entity has been accused of fraud or any other wrongdoing, whatsoever. Unlike other entries in this series, the issue here is the Establishment Clause and the potential use of taxpayer funds for the benefit of a religious institution.
In Sen. Klobuchar’s June 9, 2022, earmark disclosure, the proposed Al-Maa’uun earmark is placed in context,
Al Maa’uun is housed in the Masjid Au-Nur [sic], home to the North Minneapolis Muslim faith community. Community gatherings, religious services, and other community meetings are held in the space.
Klobuchar writes,
During the pandemic it became apparent Al Maa’uun was in need of more physical space. Designating a Workforce Development Center will create a space for programmatic expansion and community engagement. Al Maa’uun will conduct pre-development work for facility expansion including feasibility studies, exploration reports, ground surveys, and concept planning for a facility to be built on the current parking lot.
It’s not clear from Klobuchar’s description whether the new building (still unbuilt) would serve the same dual purposes as the existing structure. But the references to the mosque and the space’s variety of uses should have been a red flag.
Both the mosque and the nonprofit are headed up by the same man, Imam Makram El-Amin. El-Amin was a 2014 recipient of a prestigious Bush Fellowship. The Al-Maa’uun nonprofit was incorporated in 2009 and received its tax-exempt status in 2010, according to government records. County property records show that the site is owned by the mosque (An-Nur) and thus exempt from paying property taxes. The building dates from 1969.
The history of the mosque dates back for decades. It was founded, and appears to continue to serve, as a house of worship oriented towards a mostly African-American congregation, as opposed to African-immigrant.
El-Amin has served as Imam at An-Nur for more than 30 years. Former NBA player Khalid El-Amin is his youngest brother.
In the past, both El-Amin and An-Nur have been associated with now-state-attorney-general Keith Ellison. A 2007 Minneapolis Star Tribune profile of then-U.S. Congressman Ellison (quoted in 2010) included this biographical note,
When he’s home, Ellison will attend the Masjid An-Nur mosque on the North Side in Minneapolis.
A 2007 New York Times profile of El-Amin described him as “The Congressman’s Imam.” Campaign finance databases show a 2011 donation of $500 from El Amin to Ellison’s congressional campaign. This year (2026), El Amin donated $250 to the campaign of state Sen. Bobby Joe Champion (D), listing his occupation as Executive Director, Al-Maa’uun.
In its early years, the nonprofit Al-Maa’uun was a relatively modest operation, able to file the IRS 990-EZ form as recently as 2017. Among other activities, it operated a small program under the federal child nutrition program, receiving small amounts of funding from the state Dept. of Education (MDE).
The entire operation really took off with the coming of COVID. The food operation skyrocketed in 2021 and beginning in 2022 the nonprofit added funding from seven (7) other state agencies: the departments of Agriculture (MDA), Corrections (DOC), Employment (DEED), Health (MDH), Human Services (DHS), Public Safety (DHS) and the state Housing Finance Agency (HFA). The dollar amounts total more than $5 million over the past decade, most received in the past three years.
The totals above for DEED include revenue received from a $1 million direct appropriation (earmark) passed by the state legislature in 2023, in a bill sponsored by state Rep. Hodan Hassan (D-MPLS). Hassan no longer serves in the legislature. As you can see above, the grant represented the nonprofit’s first funding from DEED.
The $1 million state earmark was part of a $1 billion tsunami of taxpayer cash provided to nonprofits by the all-Democrat-controlled Minnesota government of 2023. MN Reformer wrote about the phenomenon under the headline,
Minnesota lawmakers gave nonprofits $1.1 billion last year. Will we know if it’s well spent?
The language of the Al-Maa’uun grant notes that the money was directed,
for a grant to Al Maa’uun, formerly the North at Work program, for a strategic intervention program designed to target and connect program participants to meaningful, sustainable living wage employment. This is a onetime appropriation.
North@Work was also mentioned in the earlier (2022) Klobuchar earmark proposal.
State Rep. Esther Agbaje (D) introduced a bill in 2025, to provide Al-Maa’uun with an additional $1 million earmark. The bill did not advance in the legislature, now under split control following the 2024 election.
Al-Maa’uun’s earliest success came from operating a free-food program under the auspices of the state Dept. of Education (MDE).
In the early days of the food-fraud scandal (February 2022), I documented the state’s 19 largest participating nonprofit food distribution networks in this post. Al-Maa’uun represented the 17th biggest network at the time. The subject of yesterday’s post, the New American Development Center (NADC) was the 7th largest network active at that time.
Back to Al-Maa’uun and the Klobuchar earmark. According to Al-Maa’uun’s most recent tax return (through year-end 2024, Schedule D), the nonprofit owns no land. The North Lyndale property is owned by the mosque.
In the inevitable political connection, that same tax return for election year 2024 (Schedule I) notes a cash grant of $30,000 given to an entity named Your Vote Our Future at the same address. The 2023 return lists a grant to Your Vote of $55,000.
Viewing Your Vote’s Facebook page, you can see a series of posts promoting the candidacy of Sharon El-Amin for Hennepin County Commission, District 2. Scroll back to 2024, you see a post promoting her Minneapolis school board re-election.
In last month’s Hennepin County primary election, Sharon finished in second place in District 2, advancing to the November general election. Finishing first in the August primary was the incumbent commissioner Irene Fernando, endorsed by, among others, current U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D).
In corporate records, “Your Vote Our Future” is variously listed as an assumed name of Al-Maa’uun and as a now-defunct, for-profit company listed at the North Lyndale Avenue address.
Sharon currently serves on the Minneapolis school board. She is, of course, Makram’s wife. Her campaign for county commission has been endorsed by a number of prominent elected officials, including AG Ellison.
Back to the proposed Klobuchar earmark. Many religious institutions can, and do, directly accept taxpayer money for child nutrition programs and a host of other social service efforts.
The issue here is the potential use of funds for buildings and building improvements on land owned by a religious institution, when the site involved serves a dual purpose. To be clear, the same issue would arise if the building were a Catholic or Lutheran church or a Jewish synagogue.
Although the Klobuchar earmark never went through, and the building project has yet to happen, the episode fits in the pattern of poor vetting of spending priorities by the Senator and her staff.