SEASON 1: EPISODE 34 | Airdate: 7/23/2022
One-on-one interview with Imam Fateen Seifullah.
Imam Fateen Seifullah is the imam of Las Vegas' oldest mosque, Masjid As-Sabur, and a pillar of the city's Historic Westside community.
When he was young, his mother moved him and his four brothers from Shreveport, Louisiana to Los Angeles. Seifullah said his mother was in an abusive relationship but they had family in the area. When they moved to Los Angeles, South Central Los Angeles specifically, they were surrounded by street gangs and violence.
It is in that environment that the imam was drawn into the street life, as he calls it. He moved to Las Vegas and continued that same life. It was during his second prison term for dealing drugs that he was introduced to Islam. He converted and became the imam of his mosque in 1999.
It was then that he worked with gang members and drug dealers, whom he knew from his days in the street life, to get them to move their operations away from his mosque. He and his late wife, Nissa, created the Muslim Village at the mosque. They started by providing fresh food to the neighbors in need but the village has grown to include all kinds of services for the Westside.
