Next-Gen Arranged Marriage

For the most part Muslims in the West do not engage in arranged marriages and generally consider them coercive. However, Fatema Yasmine, a London and San Francisco based socialite, noticed that a distant relative to arranged marriages called “assisted marriages” — where couples met through the efforts of family and friends — were still very popular, if not the norm. This gave the self-proclaimed “Asian Cupid” the idea to launch Yasmine Connect, a match-making service designed to connect people of Asian and Muslim backgrounds. Her aim is to bring professionalism and sophistication to an important but undervalued part of Muslim social life.

Assisted marriage is an area where the younger generations have not been very innovative. For quite some time websites like Muslima.com, Shaadi.com and Jeevansaathi, have dominated the scene. Clients, usually the parents, input their children’s “bio-data” into the website and then wait for other clients, usually other parents, to browse through the thousands of profiles. Meanwhile, Muslim organizations such as the Islamic Society of North America, hold matrimonial dinners to introduce marriage-seekers at its annual convention, but the scene ends up being dominated by parents because attendees are required to be with a chaperone. Finally, there are a number of underground assisted marriage networks — one is run out of Texas and has a sign up fee of $275.00 — with their own forms and formalities. However, these are run by older “aunties” who are, in essence, an extension of the parents and the questionnaires reflect their prejudices. One of the questions curiously asks one to describe their complexion: “dark, wheatish, fair, or very fair.” Other questionnaires are so boring they look like Homeland Security forms.

Yasmine, a 24 year old Bangladeshi who also runs the premier Asian blog Inside Desi — and is so popular among youth that she has two Facebook accounts (because one has reached its 5000 friends limit) — believes that now is the time for change and that the parent driven approach will not last. “There is a question of how honest you can be when you are telling your parents what you want.”

The sentiment is shared by Sepia Mutiny blogger Tanzila Ahmed. “Sometimes our parents and aunties hardly know us,” says the voting rights activist. “They barely know what I do for a living. They think that the fact a guy is single and looking to get married is enough.  Once after much badgering, I reluctantly agreed to let the aunties ‘look’ for me — but first they had to ask if he voted in the last presidential elections and for whom. The aunties replied that was too personal to ask and when it came to a matter of love, none of that should matter. But to me, when looking for a mate, it matters. So now when aunties ask me ‘You are so pretty! Why aren’t you married?’ I just throw it back on the boys and say ‘They don’t wanna marry me!’”

Yasmine also recognizes that the current form of assisted marriage is too impersonal. “I personalize myself with clients,” she says. “I want to get to know them and make them feel comfortable being honest with me. Ultimately it is all about trust.” To this end she schedules interviews with people that live near her and others she befriends via Skype.

The service, which is a month old and so far has 700 registrants, costs far less than the matrimonial websites and saves clients time by leaving the sifting and browsing to someone else. “Young people want efficiency,” says Yasmine. She has not yet matched any couples through the site but two speed-dating events that she held in London yielded three engagements and one marriage, which brings a big smile to her face.

At the moment Yasmine has a 1:1 ratio of men and women but she is wary that this will change quickly as the number of eligible Muslim women who are looking to marry far exceeds the number of eligible men looking to settle down. She is right to be concerned. At Goatmilk, the playwright Wajahat Ali’s web-zine, Zeba Iqbal, vice-president of the Council for the Advancement of Muslim Professionals, recently complained that “for unmarried Muslim women over 30, there are increasingly limited options to meet other Muslims.” One of the solutions Iqbal demanded was that matrimonial events and websites “have to be more nuanced than the current options.”

This is the call that one social entrepreneur is trying to meet. “I just like helping people connect,” says Yasmine. Then just to emphasize the Muslim nature of the service she adds: “But if you try and use the service for hanky-panky I will throw you out.”