Young Arabs skip arranged matches with Web spouses
By Heba Kandil
DUBAI: Hala was sick of suitors who would bore her with their expectations of a good Muslim wife. So she decided to ditch her parents’ advice and matchmake for herself on the Internet.
A 28-year-old Iraqi living in London, Hala was past her marriage prime by Arab standards. But after only a few months of searching online she had found her husband.
“Going online, I didn’t have to worry about embarrassing the family if things didn’t work out or endure a lecture from my parents about how stubborn or picky I was being,” says Hala, now happily married to Zeid, a British Iraqi, for more than two years.
“I no longer had to endure suitors whose only thing in common with me was nationality, religion and ‘good family’. Most of them wouldn’t accept a modern and independent career woman,” she says, beaming with delight by the side of her husband.
Hala and Zeid are among thousands of Arab and Muslim youth breaking with the tradition of arranged marriages to select their spouses through dozens of matchmaking websites.
They provide a safe meeting ground for socialising otherwise difficult in many traditional societies, and large databases mean there is more chance of finding what you’re looking for.
According to Jupiter Research, the online matchmaking industry is set to grow nine per cent worldwide to $516 million in 2005, after growing 19 percent last year. Nabil, a Dubai-based IT professional who is cut off from family networks back in Syria and too busy to socialise, has turned to www.qiran.com to try to find his Ms Right. And it has been a lot more useful than his parents’ suggestions.
“At first I thought it was weird, but I gave in when I found I had more choice than I could ever have in my normal life,” said Nabil, who has been searching in cyberland for a year now.
Sami Gherfal, an administrator at Qiran, says it has had up to one million users register since it was launched last year.
“We’re pickier and more complex than our parents’ generation. We’re more travelled, linked to the world and affected by outside ideas,” he said. “So the search to find our partner is not easy and sometimes we need help.”
Gherfal said many users in the Arab world are based in Saudi Arabia, where mixing of unmarried men and women is forbidden.
“Some conservative families don’t allow their daughters to meet strangers. But if you meet in cyberspace, technically you are not breaking any religious or cultural norms as you are not physically alone with that person,” he said.—Reuters
