Muslim Dating Apps See a Surge in Membership After Trump’s Election

By Alison Lesley --
10 Jul 2017 --

Muslims are finding love online

President Trump spent a lot of time preaching against Islam during his campaign. Forty-five days after being sworn in, President Trump signed an executive order banning residents from six Islamic countries from entering the United States. The executive order also banned refugees from the listed countries from seeking asylum in the U.S.

Muslim Dating Apps See a Surge in Membership After Trump’s Election[/tweetthis]

Muslims in the United States and all over the world started getting together to help each other be proud of their heritage. This also led to human rights activists and people from all corners of the world to start fighting the travil ban. This bill presented millennial Muslims with a new set of challenges in their day to day life. One of these new challenges was dating.

Many young Muslim’s today are tired of the outdated practice of marriage fixing. Long gone are the days where millennial Muslims let their parents chose their ideal marriage partner for them. Interaction with different sexes of the same religion also became a challenge as some American citizens started alienating some Muslims.

These two factors led to a rise in the use of dating apps. Tech savvy Muslims came up with platforms such as Muzmatch and Minder which made it easier for Muslims to find partners without actually meeting. The use of profile photos enables them to see the facial features of the matches provided. The two applications ask for detailed personal information before joining them. The information gathered is then compiled and stored in their databases and analyzed by complex algorithms.

The algorithms then provide a partner match based on the data provided by the user. Not all relationships facilitated by the platforms end up in marriage. Users are asked first to learn and get to know their partners before committing to serious life changing decisions. The platforms act as mediums of connecting young Muslims together without too much fuss. The platforms gain users by attending major Islamic conventions where they interact with the single Muslims while asking them to join.

These two platforms together with popular platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram are helping young Muslims find love online. The act of online dating is considered to be halal and as such is a welcomed practice.

These Muslim-oriented platforms also face the regular problems experienced by similar platforms. Catfishing is one such problem. Catfishing is the act of luring someone into a relationship using a fictional online persona. Cat fishing leads to a wrong pairing of people as the desired qualities maybe false. Another common problem is a shortage of decent people on these platforms. Con men and women may take advantage of unsuspecting users cheating them out of their earning or even robbing them. A grievance raised by some activists is that these Muslim based platforms fail to provide categories for homosexual Muslim’s.

Online dating in the Muslim community has also seen a rise in users as most young and single Muslims prefer meeting their partners online. In a world where time is extremely valuable, this method of meeting partners is considered time-saving.