Photographs by Yasmin Yassin
Imam Makram El-Amin, photographed outside Masjid An-Nur on Minneapolis’s Northside
Imam Makram El-Amin, photographed outside Masjid An-Nur on Minneapolis’s Northside
I first meet Makram El-Amin, the 50-year-old imam at Masjid An-Nur, on the day after the conclusion of Ramadan in May. Eid was especially joyous this year at the “Mosque of Light” (translated from Arabic), El-Amin says, as health conditions allowed the families to gather under the same roof for the first time in more than a year. I sit with my shoes off in the same row as our prostrate Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison as El-Amin gives a talk about the natural draw of community—the crucial ummah of the Quran.
“All living creatures live in community,” he preaches. “They realize the potential for their lives in community.”
El-Amin has been the imam here for nearly 25 years now, and his family is one of the most prominent families in Minneapolis’s Northside. He’s one of more than 300 people who worship at the renovated mosque on Lyndale and 18th Avenue North. And the Masjid’s Al Maa’uun program—Arabic for “neighborly needs”—reaches beyond those 300-some people to 300 to 400 families in the broader community, helping with everything from mentoring the jobless to feeding the hungry to housing the under-sheltered in 10 of its own affordable housing units. El-Amin is motivated to reach his neighbors however he can—he even worked as a chaplain for the Minneapolis Police Department for more than four years, until he decided to resign right before George Floyd was murdered in May 2020.
El-Amin’s father, Charles, came to Minneapolis from Chicago when El-Amin was seven years old to administer the Nation of Islam’s temple. Until only a year ago, El-Amin’s mother, Arlene, was also among the mosque’s leadership. It was under his father’s direction that this community evolved from Elijah Muhammad’s ideas to those of Elijah’s son Warith Deen Mohammed, who brought the theology and spiritual practice into the much older and more international tradition of Sunni Islam.
After El-Amin graduated from North High, he returned to his father’s native Chicago to attend Olive-Harvey College and to start studying the Quran with Warith Deen Mohammed. El-Amin says he was drawn to Islam because of his father’s ability to tell its stories, but he had to come to the faith on his own path well before this community chose him to be their imam.
“I had to come on my own terms, right?” he explains during our second meeting at the mosque, in August. He sees his own idiosyncratic path mirrored by many of the families that have joined him since. “Quite frankly, Masjid An-Nur is a place of destination,” he says. “When people come here, they’re meant to come here. They didn’t stumble over here.” He says his experience in this mosque is rooted in the African American experience. “I’m from here,” he says. “And I’ve been all over the world, but I studied the Quran here.” And although the majority of his ummah at Masjid An-Nur remains African American, the international community—the Somali, the Egyptian, the Oromo, the Bangladeshi, and the Turkish families who have contributed the majority of the growth to his ummah in the last 10 years—have been very receptive to his leadership.
“This is such a racialized society we are in,” he says, “where they’re going to be counted as Black before anything.”
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Your parents are from Chicago. They both independently converted from Christianity to the Nation of Islam there in the late 1950s before arriving in Minneapolis in the 1970s. Did they tell you why they converted?
I think Elijah Muhammad’s message to Black people was about taking ownership for themselves and their lives. It spoke to their self-sufficiency—that we’re enough for us, right? And I think that message resonated with a people that had essentially been beaten up. That was a life-changing thing.
You’re 50 now, and this is your 25th year as imam. When did you realize you were on the path to lead this community?
I can remember coming of age at 13. I was the oldest son, so I can remember my father including me in leadership classes and studying with him. I was always attracted to text because of the stories. And he just had a phenomenal way of sharing that with us. But I came to faith on my own terms. I mean, I was rebellious for a while, too.
You told me you kept your love for text secret at first.
Yeah. It wasn’t cool. It wasn’t sexy, you know.
What was your favorite story from the Quran that your father told you?
The story of Moses. He escaped death. He’s put on the water. He came out and he entered the house of the Pharaoh. Grew up right among them, but also had privilege.
Yeah, he was the Pharaoh’s pet.
Particularly his wife took to him. They embraced him, but all of that was God covering him the whole time. And then he became a leader for the children of Israel. I mean, that’s not far from a narrative that matched our story as African Americans, too.
How did you rebel?
I mean, I never got into any serious, serious trouble, thank God. I think my rebellion would be me hanging out. Sometimes we would skip school. Sometimes we would do things that I knew that my parents would frown upon. That lasted for me, I would say, through my high school years and then maybe just a little beyond graduation: 18, 19 years old. However, I was unique among many of my peers. I had a very strong, tight-knit family. So, when I was doing things I wasn’t supposed to, I knew it right away. Even in the midst of doing whatever we were doing, I knew this was not my life. My friends, that was their life. I was masquerading in their life. I knew my life was the life that I had in my home. The life that my parents shared with me.
Do you know why your community chose you to lead them?
It came down to myself, another person, and they actually considered bringing back my father. I think they were drawn to having a younger leader, even if I wasn’t as polished as my father. And when it was made known, he supported me right away and really became my closest confidant. He was probably my biggest critic, too.
Your youngest brother, Khalid, is a former NBA and NCAA point guard and now the head basketball coach at St. Thomas Academy. The point guard is usually a leader, the “coach on the floor.” Is leadership part of your family’s culture?
Honestly, I think we get it from my parents. I would say in their prime, my parents were about getting it done. To the point that sometimes that rubbed people wrong.
A little too honest?
Or too terse. So, I’ve had to temper that sometimes in my work. “Mom, just don’t say it that way. It’s true what you’re saying, but we’re not saying it that way.” That’s what I learned—that’s what finding my leadership was.
The Ellison family are longtime members of this mosque. Do they come to you for spiritual or political counsel?
Spiritual.
Imam Makram El-Amin gets down to pray inside Masjid An-Nur.
Imam Makram El-Amin gets down to pray inside Masjid An-Nur.
How long have they been coming to you?
Before [Keith Ellison] became a congressional leader, The New York Times came and did a piece on me. It was called “The Congressman’s Imam.” They wanted to understand him through me. They vetted me, researched my style and who I was and the interfaith work I’ve done. I said he was a member of this mosque and I could vouch for his character. I understood that this was a first and it might make some people feel nervous, but quite frankly, he would serve this community and his district in a way like we hadn’t seen before.
Around five years ago, you were asked by then MPD chief Janeé Harteau to become one of nearly 20 chaplains for the Minneapolis Police Department. You ultimately resigned in frustration in the spring of 2020. But what was the potential that you saw when initially taking this role?
I was entering my 20th year as an imam. I had made up in my mind, which is still true today, that I want to be in places and spaces, at intersections of things that matter. There is a historical rift between the African American community and the Muslim community. There’s also the jaded history between the police department and my community. Which is likely the reason they sought me out. I mean, obviously they didn’t say that to me, but I know enough to know.
So, you were one of the only Muslims?
I was the only Muslim.
At that time, they wanted you to help reach Muslim officers who were struggling with all that we ask of police?
That’s right. Pastoral care.
What went wrong?
Jamar Clark was murdered, and the response to it was appalling to me. He was murdered five minutes from the mosque. And when Justine Damond was murdered after that, the difference in reaction was appalling as well. Prior to that, I would do ride-alongs. I could sit in roll call. As a chaplain, I could do all of that.
And what did you see?
On the first hour of a four-hour ride-along, the officers are on their best behavior. But like in any other workplace, you become familiar. So even the language that was used and approaches and even hearing them talk about my neighbors before they made a stop and things like that. Now I have a different spin on profiling than many. First of all, we all profile. We can act holier-than-thou, but we all do that. But there was such an overusage of it.
I think about all the guns on the street. There are children being shot on the Northside. What do you think beat cops are most afraid of?
I believe that it is a bunker mentality, right? “It’s us against the world out here,” right? It’s like, “We’re the good guys; they’re the bad guys.” You know what I’m saying? I grew up knowing some really good cops. I knew Chief Arradondo when he was a beat cop. He used to walk up and down Plymouth during my period of rebellious time.
What was he like?
Arradondo grew up in south Minneapolis. He was fair. Even if we were on the corner—let’s say there was a beer bottle, and he walked up on us. It’s an open bottle. It’s a violation. It’s all that stuff. I remember one time he saw us, to the point where you don’t even run or anything. He said, “I’m going to make my way back around. I don’t want to see what I see when I get back.” Now, if he did see that, he would do what he needed to do. But he gave you the benefit of the doubt. Because one thing that I figured out in this work is that police officers have a lot of discretion—and a lot of it is based on their judgment in the moment.
There are people who hurt people out there.
Do some people need to go to jail? Absolutely, they do. We’re not pacifists here, or naïve. Most of the crime in this community comes from less than 100 individuals on the Northside. The police know this. I’ve heard them, in roll call, talk about it. They even have pictures of family and associations up. And I’m like, “I know this guy. I know this family. I went to school with these guys.”
Don’t cops need to be afraid when there are so many guns on the street?
They put their hand up and said, “Me.” There’s a responsibility with every job you take. I raised my hand—I accepted it.
And the police have broad discretion, like you said, and they’re armed.
Exactly. So, what I’m saying when I give you that badge is, “I’m trusting your judgment.” I’m saying in these situations, if you’re fearful for your life, I can’t trust you to make the right decision when it matters most. I’m not talking you’re in the park and you get the ball out of the tree scenario. I’m talking about when it’s a domestic dispute, which is 90 percent of the calls, by the way—I learned that too. It’s not an easy job. We understand that. It’s an underappreciated job.
If the citizens of Minneapolis decide to get rid of a traditional police department with the charter amendment this fall, most likely, we’ll lose Chief Arradondo’s leadership. What kind of policing does this community need, and what do you think it wants?
I believe, just like a human being, a department can be reformed. I think it can be. I’m not on the “defund the police, abolish the police” train.
Have you told that to Keith Ellison’s son, Council Member Jeremiah Ellison?
When Jeremiah brought up “defund the police,” I told him I don’t understand it. Well, let me step back. I understand that it means shifting resources so that an officer isn’t, necessarily, the first line of defense, if you will, when certain things happen. I get that. Don’t say “defund the police,” though. “Defund the police” is a lightning rod. It was not clear to many of us who live over North. I live in this community. I’m not paratrooping in and parachuting in and—no. I live here.
Are things more violent in your neighborhood since the defund movement began in the wake of the murder of George Floyd?
Absolutely. This hasn’t happened before. I’ve grown up here. This is different. A bullet came through my house. It came through the outer wall, through my siding, and put a hole in my couch. It was a perfect storm after the riots. And you had the cops saying, “If I can’t do what I want, I won’t do anything.” The issue becomes, to me, is leaders have to lead, OK? I love Jeremiah; I love his family. My issue is I don’t understand this. When we sat down and got to talking about it, I could see some of the things he was saying, but I’m saying, “This don’t equate to that, not in the mind of the people. And what you’re saying translates to lawlessness.”
So, what needs to happen?
I think if “defund the police” had a different name and an articulate enough spokesperson locally…
Is Jeremiah sticking to this message?
I think he’s backed away from it, because he understood that you can have the right idea and the wrong message. The right idea that’s not articulated correctly, you’re going down in flames. I think that he saw that. I’m not saying that he’s any less committed to it, but I think he’s being more thoughtful in the way he’s communicating it now. Some people see that as him pivoting away from it. I don’t know, but if he asked me, I’m saying, “Why now? We didn’t do this when Harteau was there, but we’re gonna do it with Arradondo? He’s from us, and now we’re going to do this?” And the fact of the matter is he fired them. If you needed a sign, he gave you one. Unprecedented. Never happened before. It was always administrative—“We’re going to see and we’re going to do this,” and then nothing materialized. He wasn’t mealy-mouthed. He wasn’t mumbling, “Well, kind of.” No, it was, “We don’t train this way. I don’t sign off on this. I fired them because it was against protocol.” It was very clear and decisive. The mayor made the right decision, too, not to back the city council. I know people that are like, “Man, where are the police at?” They ain’t said, “Defund the police.” They’re like, “I can’t get them to come around here. What’s going on? People are wreaking havoc over here.”
So, what can the community do?
The issue for me is this, and it’s very unpopular: I believe that we don’t have enough police on the street. Now, they go the other way. “Oh, you going to hold us accountable for killing one of these guys? Well, then, we’re going to open it up.” They’ve made themselves necessary, so now, you take the bandage off, it bleeds again. It don’t take that long to figure out what’s going on. I believe there has to be a stronger showing for law enforcement in the short run. You’ve got to calm things down. We need more cops in the short run. We have to get this situation under control, not just police, but community, too.
What about the long run?
There’s no civility without safety. I’m saying, “Get it under control.” We need to pause. Then we can exhale for a minute, and now we can begin to understand, OK, we’ve got to start to invest in education, in economic opportunities. I have faith in human beings. So, yes, it can be done, and anybody who thinks otherwise—first of all, they can’t lead me. I can’t vote for them. I can’t.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Originally published in the October 2021 issue.
