Zohran Mamdani met his wife on the hinge. Many American Muslims meet their wedding partners in a similar way

“It made me feel less a loser,” said Maznavi, laughing at meeting her own husband online over 14 years ago, before applications like Hinge become a dating element for many people.

“It’s so cool,” she said about Mamdani. “He and his wife are so chic from New York.”

The success of Mamdani on Hinge, as well as the program “Muslim Matchmaker” on Hulu, give an overview of some of the ways in which American Muslims meet their spouses, from the traditional to the contemporary. Many sail in the quest for love and marriage while balancing their beliefs, their Fousse levels, their various lifestyles and a range of cultural influences.

“We just wanted a realistic evaluation of what is happening in the romantic space of Muslim Americans and that we have unique challenges, but we also have very universal challenges,” said Yasmin Elhady, one of the two games in the reality TV series on Hulu. “We present ourselves in a complicated and joyful and dynamic way.”

Maznavi, a “millen for the romance” self-written, co-edited two collections of American Muslims on love and relationships. She found that people met “by family, by friends, through a kind of fortuitous meetings, by college, through work.”

At the time she looked like, Maznavi, lawyer, writer and daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants, met people through her parents, friends and extended family.

Then living in San Francisco, she found the swimming pool of Muslims Small. His mother heard a Match.com radio announcement and suggested that he try it.

“I have always resisted,” said Maznavi. Finally, she gave up – and met her husband there.

Not as many fish in the sea

For Muslims in search of Muslims, “most of us are quite rare and extended,” said Hoda Abrahim, the other medium of the show. “You will not go to the gymnasium and be surrounded by people you could potentially marry.”

This may mean having to try a long-distance relationship, she said. Many of its customers have already used specific dating applications for Muslims, she said.

There are also events in person for Muslim singles looking for marriage.

In the show, the matchmakers describe their “rules of three” – three meetings within three months and 300 questions of compatibility to cross together. Their paved customers experience these first encounter tremors, the heat of a connection or the pain of rejection, and the uncertainty between the two.

By assessing the compatibility of a couple, the matchmakers consider what they call the “Halal-Haram ratio”, referring to the level of religious observance and the way in which the lifestyles of a couple would align.

A participant says she is trying to perform the required daily prayers, but “does not dressed particularly very modestly”. She wants someone who is open to the possibility of growing up in her faith and “coming out” and “having fun, but … always follows the principles of Islam – and trying to find a healthy balance of what it means”. (She is also in good jokes and concerts. Hairy men? Not so much).

Another participant says he wants a partner with “Islamic qualities” and has no preference for whether or not she carries the hijab.

“Many Muslims, even if they are not a practicing and adherent Muslim, will have certain things they are very intense: it could be the practice of Ramadan.” There is a really serious choice of lifestyle that is associated with Islam and I think that in marriage, you are looking for someone to complete your style. ”

According to a study by Pew Research Center 2023-2024, 60% of American Muslim adults said that religion was “very important” in their lives. It is close to 55% of us Christians who said the same thing in the survey.

Abrahim said that some online did not like the term “halal-haram ratio”, seeing it as normalizing “haram” behavior, which means behavior that is not religiously authorized. She pushes back. “We don’t normalize it. We simply say that people obviously practice at a certain level. ”

Dating vs courtier

Then there is the debate on what to call to know the other person: does that come out? Couron?

“This is something we have discussed a lot,” said Abrahim. “If I say” go out together “, I mean to court and we have in fact clarified that in the series, as, we are intentional and we are serious.”

Elhady said there were so many positive answers to the series, but noted that some Muslims did not like the word “dating”. To this, she says: Make your own definition or call it as you wish. (Some use the term “halal dating”.)

“In their mind, dating is a word that has been made for non-Muslims by non-Muslims and that means that there is a physical relationship before commitment,” she said. “The show does not represent people in sex before marriage. … He represents people looking for love.”

Among the questions that Kaiser Aslam is asked by some of the students he serves as a Muslim chaplain at the Center for Islamic Life of Rutgers University is: How to know if someone is compatible? And how to know them without becoming intimate?

“In the Islamic tradition, becoming intimate and sexually intimate is not authorized before marriage,” he said.

He suggests having serious conversations with measures of responsibility in place, such as chaperons, meetings in relatively public places and clearly define the intentions “that you do not try to start intimacy or intimate contact, but you simply try to understand yourself.” And, too, talk to the friends and family of the person, he said.

Marriage, faith and culture

Muslim Americans are very diverse – racically and ethnically.

“Young Muslims find again and again people of different cultures, which is beautiful and great to see,” said Aslam.

For some, cultural differences can feed “arguments in the same way”, no, marriage in this way. No, in our tradition, the side of the guy pays for that. The girls’ side pays for that, “said Aslam, who has played many weddings and provides advice before marriage.

Some parents oppose their children to get out of their culture, he said.

Sometimes there may be “racist foundations,” he said, adding: “We must call it for what it is. It is not religious in any way, a form or a form. ” Theologically, he said: “We are encouraged to ensure that the most diverse good traditions have the ability to interact with each other.”

Other times, he said, the parents fear that their children will flee from their culture and need to be reassured.

Tahirah Nailah Dean, who is black and Latina, said that she had met such barriers in her research, knowing that certain potential matches sought to marry in their own culture and ethnic. Some of his concerns also echo broader questions and debates beyond Muslim communities on racial preference and racial prejudices in meetings.

Dean, a lawyer who also writes on Muslim love and marriage, married at 30 and then divorced.

In her twenties, she sailed in applications, but found features of things such as “ghosts” and “love bombing” emotionally exhausted emotionally. She tried matchmaking through the mosque and the “twinning aunts” as well as to know people through activities such as volunteering at the mosque. She also asked her friends to install her.

Recently, she returned to research.

Muslim or not, Elhady of the show “Matchmaker Muslim” argued: “People really want to fall in love – and it’s difficult to do in the modern era”.

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