Tag archive for ‘how to get married’

Why Millions of Muslims Are Signing Up For Online Matchmaking

By Lydia Green for BBC Arabic
Reprinted from BBC Online
Zawaj.com Muslim Matrimonial Service

Zawaj.com is one of the oldest and best known Muslim matrimonial services.

Arranged marriages are standard practice in many societies, but the introductions and screening process can be an ordeal for the young people involved – even if they are pleased with the eventual outcome. Some Western Muslims have concluded that online matchmaking can help reduce embarrassment.

“You don’t like her? Why not? She got two legs, she got two arms, she’s a professional. How can you not like her?”

Adeem Younis remembers all too well the trials of his family-orchestrated matchmaking. “Someone would be brought round for an evening meal and it was a really big deal. The samosas came out and the chicken and the chapattis… It was so highly pressurised.”

Along with others in Europe and the US, Younis began looking for samosa-free ways to help young Muslims tie the knot, and Muslim online matchmaking was born.

Adeem Younis encourages people to involve their families in an online search

Sometime in the last decade or so, online dating became a mainstream activity, in Europe and North America at least. These days everyone is at it, from the likes of Halle Berry and Adele – both say they have given it a go – to your aunt, my grandmother, and half the people swinging like coat hangers on the early morning commute.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that Western Muslims adapted the idea to their needs. For many, online dating offers a low-stress solution to the daunting challenge of finding a partner for marriage in countries where few share their faith, and in communities where matchmaking is considered a family affair.

Younis’s own matchmaking site, SingleMuslim.com, which he founded above a fast-food shop in Wakefield while still a lowly undergraduate, now boasts more than a million members.

However, as the young entrepreneur tells me, to call the practice “Muslim online dating” would be inaccurate. The goal of such sites is often far more ambitious than the average hook-up website. Instead of hazy morning-after memories and hopes of receiving a follow-through text message, sites like SingleMuslim.com aim to provide clients with a partner for life. It is a responsibility not to be taken lightly.

“In Islam, marriage is equal to half of your religion,” he says, quoting a saying thought to have been uttered by the Prophet Mohammed, “so you can imagine how important it is… Islam teaches us that marriage is the cornerstone of society as a whole.”

SingleMuslim.com now claims a success rate of about four matches per day. But the site is just one example of a booming market serving Muslims of all ages and degrees of religiosity.

For example, there is Muslimmatrimony.com, which allows members to search for partners not only by sect, but by the particular doctrine of Islam that they follow and the languages they speak.

Another, HipsterShaadi.com used to market itself as the site for people looking for a partner with whom to “write poetry and dance in the rain” but of whom their parents will also approve. It has now changed its name to ishqr.com and says it is the place for feminists looking for a “bold, humble, feminist brother or a Rumi-and-granola-loving Muslim”.

Muhammad met his wife Catherine through an online matchmaking site four years ago. Today he is happily married with two children. But his search for marital bliss wasn’t always an easy ride.

Muhammad and Catherine with their first child

“There isn’t that scope to meet people,” Muhammad says. “Devout Muslims don’t go pubbing and clubbing. In typical Western cultures that’s OK, but in Muslim culture it’s frowned upon. So there are very few avenues, apart from family contact, for matchmaking to occur.”

Muhammad had been on various secular dating websites before he decided to give Muslim online matchmaking a try.

“It was round about Easter 2010 when I first emailed Catherine,” he recollects. “Things escalated very, very rapidly. Three or four months from initial contact we got married – we just knew really. When you meet the right person, you know.”

Muhammad, who is of Bangladeshi origin, and Catherine, who is British and converted to Islam at university, may seem like an unusual couple, but in many ways their relationship exemplifies the kind of relationships that these websites seek to endorse.

¨The internet makes meeting easier culturally.¨ – Mbaye Lo, Professor of Arabic

“The identity of global Islam is not physical, it’s more ideological – its constituency is a global constituency,” says Mbaye Lo, professor of Arabic at Duke University and author of an academic paper titled Muslim Marriage Goes Online.

“That is why the websites often show an African Muslim man with an Indo-Pakistani girl, for example, on their main page. They portray themselves in a physical manner that postulates Islam’s globality in order to engage people on a global level and give them more of a global outlook, a global citizenship.”

According to Lo, the websites not only encourage global citizenship, they also allow young people in conservative countries to choose potential matches with greater freedom. “The status quo in many countries doesn’t always favour women in making choices – the internet makes meeting easier culturally,” he says.

Riad, who hails from the Tunisian capital Tunis, met his wife online in 2012. “I fell in love with her the moment I saw her,” he recollects, “a real coup de foudre”.

However, like many in the Middle East and North Africa, he has reservations about online dating. Despite his own positive experience, he would not necessarily recommend it to others. “The virtual world is a world of lies,” he warns, “you just don’t know who you are talking to.”

Unlike in the West, where Muslim online matchmaking often appeals to young people with a strong religious identity, in Tunisia, Riad tells me, the opposite is true.

“Very religious families would prefer that their children meet future partners in the traditional ways, through the family. They take the view that meeting a partner online isn’t natural and they are therefore very suspicious.”

In the West, however, the industry is booming. Younis, who set up SingleMuslim.com in 2000, never imagined it would turn into a full-time career.

However, 14 years on, the website has given him more than one thing to be proud of. A few years after setting up the site, the young entrepreneur found a wife of his own online. He is now a proud father of four, his last child, a healthy little girl, having been born while this article was being written.

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Top 10 Ways to Meet a Muslim for Marriage, Part 1 – Family Friends

Happy couple silhouetted against the sunsetBy Wael Abdelgawad | Zawaj.com

A single Muslim looking for a good partner for marriage is on a rough road full of obstacles. If you’re looking for someone pious, the problem is that religious Muslims generally do not mix with the other gender, so where is the opportunity to meet someone?

First of all, let’s stop marrying our cousins. Yes, it is allowed in Islam and I can see how in exceptional circumstances it might be necessary. For example if one comes from a very small village with few choices.

First cousin marriages, however, have a statistically higher chance of resulting in children with serious birth defects. Beyond that, I’ve noticed that cultures that consistently interbreed tend to be narrow minded and tribal. They are closed off to new ways of thinking and doing things, closed off to different cultures, and suspicious of outsiders in general, even when those “outsiders” are Muslims.

We need to open our eyes and look beyond our own families for marriage partners. We must build bonds among the Ummah, bring in fresh blood and share our unique cultural traditions.

Secondly, in Islam we do not date, by which I mean we do not engage in the practice of spending personal time with a variety of people of the opposite gender until we find someone compatible. This practice inevitably leads to zinaa (fornication), which of course is prohibited in Islam. It also sets women up to be taken advantage of by men, because often the women are looking for a serious relationship that leads to marriage, whereas the men are looking for sexual pleasure and are willing to play along and say whatever is necessary to get it. At that point the man abandons the woman and leaves her broken and confused.

No, Western style dating is definitely not the way.

So how then does one meet a good person outside the small circle of family and relatives?

1. Family friends

This first point may not work for the kinds of closed-in families that tend to marry cousins, because their circle of friends can be very limited. However, for anyone else this can be a major network. For many of us, we grew up knowing the children of our parents’ friends. We played with them, and saw them at dinners, weddings and other events.

If there’s someone you’re interested in within this circle, just ask your parents to speak to their parents. Who knows, they might be interested as well, and you will have found a good match with someone who already has ties to your family.

Also consider looking outside your own community and culture. Muslims in the West tend to congregate by community – Egyptians with Egyptians, Iraqis with Iraqis, etc. But many go beyond that, getting to know Muslims of other backgrounds and races.

If your family is open minded, then discuss your wishes with them. In my own city I know one Egyptian family whose son married the daughter of some Iraqi family friends; another son married an Afghani girl, again family friends. I have a white American convert friend who is happily married to a Pakistani sister, and I know a Hispanic brother who is married to a Pakistani. I also know of two white + African American couples. And that’s just in the limited circle of people I know. It’s becoming more and more common.

Next: Part 2 – Talk to Your Friends

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How to Approach a Muslim Woman for Marriage?

Lebanese Muslim couple

A Muslim couple enjoying the sunset

Islam discourages interaction between unmarried men and women, while encouraging them to marry. How does one bridge this gap?

Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:

In sha’ Allah, if the focus of your question is directed towards the ways of finding a wife in the West or North America, I would recommend the following:

1. Islamic gatherings – You may attend various Islamic gatherings at Islamic centers or in mosques and you may engage in business like conversation with the members of the opposite sex, without being isolated with them.

2. Personal introductions – You may also make use of brothers and sisters who may introduce you to prospective candidates and talk to them under supervision.

3. Matrimonial ads – You may do some kind of correspondence with candidates who have advertised their names in the Islamic magazines (or matrimonial services like Zawaj.comEditor).

4. Direct approach – In the time of the Sahabah (Prophet’s Companions), they used to meet people sometimes in the presence of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and sometimes in other circumstances. For instance, on a number of occasions women used to come offering themselves as candidates for marriage. Accordingly, some men would accept to get married to them.

Muslim husband and wife

Muslim couple

This shows that the Sahabah were very simple and undemanding about choosing their partners so long as they had the basic religious and character requirements. In this society, generally speaking, we tend to put so many conditions and requirements that are not essentials from an Islamic perspective. In Islam, the basic thing we should consider in marriage is religion and character. All other requirements we can compromise.

The Companions also used to make other people introduce them to possible candidates. They would see each other and occasionally talk with them in order to determine their eligibility for marriage.

In conclusion, you may choose any of the methods in order to find prospective candidates.

Once you have chosen some, you may inquire about them from people who are reliable and trustworthy in order to determine their illegibility and integrity. You are allowed to ask about their past in order to find out the essential points reflecting their character. If a person has a bad past and he or she has changed and improved his or her life Islamically after having repented their sins, you are allowed to marry them. In this case you are not allowed to nag them about their past after marriage.

Source : http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/S…=1119503545518

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