Shaykh Uthman

I didn't know any single Muslim growing up.

All my friends were either Christian or Catholic.

And that's how I got introduced to religion was because a lot of their parents would send us to church thinking that it would fix us.

The problem is that we would go to church and they would tell us, well, Jesus died for your sins.

So as long as you believe in Jesus, you're going to heaven anyway.

It's free.

So we were like, all right, well, in that case, you know, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing.

And Jesus paid my debt, so I'm going to heaven.

So it never encouraged us to stop the lifestyle we lived.

I used to go to a Catholic church and I went to both Protestant, Catholic, I mean, Baptist, every kind of church, because my friends were all from different, diverse backgrounds.

But the Catholic Church was really interesting because we used to confess every Sunday.

So Friday night was bad and Saturday night was worse.

Sunday morning, we were in suits with abuelas and tias, like grandmas and aunts.

And we were in church and we would go to this little box.

And I still remember it.

You know, you would go and the priest would be there and you would be like, forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

You know, last night was crazy.

We shot up another gang or we stabbed this guy or we got this guy tied up right now.

We've got him in our basement.

Wow.