Some Muslims Use Speed Dating to Spur Marriage - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/nyregion/13dating.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all
Speed-Dating, Muslim Style
By ADAM B. ELLICK
Published: February 11, 2011
A speed dating event geared toward Muslim singles was held in a conference room at a Bayside, Queens
hotel.
MUHAMMAD BAIG knows exactly what he wants in a son-in-law, but he is also willing to
compromise. Mr. Right would be Pakistani, though someone from India might do. Mr. Baig
prefers a doctor or lawyer, yet will accept other professions. He brags about his ability to discern
a United States citizen over an immigrant whose status is more precarious by the confidence in
his walk. And how can Mr. Baig tell if a candidate comes from a good family — if he prays
daily, does not drink, and would not marry outside Islam? Just look at how he dresses.
“I don’t like a hobo,” Mr. Baig said. Then, shrugging toward his 21-year-old daughter, a nursing
student, he added, “But it’s her choice. She has to like him, too.”
As his daughter approached graduation, Mr. Baig, a Queens wholesaler whose thin black beard
adorns a pudgy face, had been on the lookout, going to the mosque more often, asking more
acquaintances about their unwed children. But he had had little luck, so one Sunday last fall, he
sat on the perimeter of a hotel conference room in Bayside, Queens, and watched as bachelor
after bachelor sat across from his daughter, a beige veil draped over her plump face, for a few
minutes of stilted conversation.
Speed dating is always a bit awkward. Take away the alcohol, invite parents to watch from the
sidelines, and the ritual takes on the excruciating air of a middle-school dance. Now raise the
stakes: Mr. Baig was one of many at the Bayside event who said that if a match was made,
marriage could follow within a month.
That’s Millanus, the ultimate oxymoron: Islamic matrimony speed dating. It is a twice-yearly
conclave started in 2007 by a Pakistani-American financial adviser from Long Island who was
tired of being asked by Muslim clients if he knew anyone suitable for their children. Some 75
participants, including people from as far away as Seattle, Ottawa and Texas, paid $120 in
advance — $150 at the door — for the most recent event, which included a few dozen fiveminute “dates”; a buffet of chicken curry and biryani rice coated in saffron; and a break for
Adhan, the late-afternoon prayer. Family members like Mr. Baig were encouraged to observe the
encounters. To drink: hot tea or Kool-Aid.
“It’s a combination of East and West,” said the organizer, Jamal Mohsin. “Back in Pakistan,
everything is arranged. Here, on the other extreme, individuals pick everything and parents, who
raised you, aren’t involved. So I’ve created an event with both of these extremes. I’ve kept
parents in the loop so they feel involved. At the same time, it’s speed dating. We’re being
American.”
The women at Millanus events stay in the seats — stiff-backed, standard-issue seafoam-green
upholstered hotel seats — while the men rotate among them. There are always more women:
many Muslim men return to their ancestral villages to select a wife. On this Sunday, one
bachelorette wore knee-high leather boots and purple eye shadow; another, a long, elegant white
dress. Many were draped in traditional Islamic attire; about a third were veiled.
These included Mr. Baig’s daughter, who declined to answer questions from — or even to give
her name to — a reporter. To the men, she spoke softly and smiled rarely through what seemed
like an endless series of nervous job interviews. Her father said Millanus offers a comfortable
cultural mix: more modern than socials at the mosques, where men and women rarely interact,
but still in the presence of parents, and therefore, strong in Islamic values. “Love marriages break
after one or two years,” he said. “But arranged marriages aren’t easy either.”
Throughout the two-hour dating round, Mr. Baig meticulously inspected the crop, criticizing a
rotation of men for their style or walk, with particular disdain for a bald man in his 40s who wore
a striped business shirt. His focus intensified on a dapper 26-year-old information technologist
named Shahid Imtiaz with a chiseled jaw and black film-director glasses.
“As soon as it ends,” Mr. Baig confided, “I’m going after one man.”
MR. MOHSIN is an unlikely Islamic matchmaker. He grew up in Karachi and became a
journalist, then moved to New York in 1979 to pursue a master’s degree in business
administration at Iona College. He met his own wife the American way: as a 24-year-old
graduate student, he took a job at an Indian boutique in the New Rochelle Mall, and a frequent
customer named Marilyn caught his eye. Like himself, Marilyn came from a family and
community in the Bronx where men and women are largely separated until marriage. Hers,
however, was Jewish; Orthodox, in fact. They disowned her when she introduced them to her
Muslim suitor. (Only over the past two years, she said, have they begun to patch things up.)
Now, Mrs. Mohsin, a geriatric social worker who is 53, blends easily among the women at
Millanus, wearing a blue sequined shalwar kameez, a traditional Pakistani outfit. “I don’t know
what our secret is,” she said of their marriage, “but we’ve been doing it for 31 years.”
In Pakistan — and in parts of the Pakistani-American community — it is often said that you
don’t marry a person, but their family. So as Mr. Mohsin’s financial-advising business grew, and
with it his Rolodex of wealthy immigrants, many people began to view him as an expeditious
resource to jump-start an arranged marriage. Many of his clients, Mr. Mohsin said, seemed less
concerned with their financial portfolio than with their children’s prospects for finding a
reputable partner.
A FIVE-MINUTE DATE Arifa Zulfiqar and Jay Zaman getting acquainted, quickly, at an event at a Queens hotel.
At first, Mr. Mohsin could not resist the challenge. He casually introduced a few families, but
soon became overwhelmed by a steady demand of requests that made him feel like “the
community’s Yellow Pages.”
Then, he read an article in Newsweek about Jdate.com, a Jewish online dating service, which
also arranges face-to-face events for singles. He did what any curious entrepreneur might: He
joined.
“I get lots of messages on my profile,” he said in a deadpan tone. “But I don’t respond.”
Mr. Mohsin then surveyed the Muslim community’s matchmaking options, and was dismayed.
Social events at most local mosques, including Sunday school, were segregated by gender;
women and men rarely spoke face to face. Like those proposing to build an Islamic community
center near ground zero, he dreams of a secular hub where Muslims could interact in a Western
social setting, like the Jewish Community Center.
For now, there is Millanus — the speed-dating events, and an accompanying Web site, with
1,500 members who pay $40 for 90 days and can view each other’s profiles and reach out, just as
members can on JDate. The name comes from the Urdu and Hindi word for “get together”:
millan. “The clock keeps ticking,” it says at the top of the site. “Our motto: Muslims marry
Muslims.” (Mr. Baig says he knows of 26 weddings so far that stemmed from his events.)
There has been some criticism from conservative religious leaders, who pleaded with Mr.
Mohsin to use teleconferencing, so men and women would meet via video chat, not in person.
One of his friends condemned his events, calling them “an American-style meat-market.”
Still, the phone continues to ring. The other day it was the mother of an unmarried Pakistani
doctor living in Arkansas. The mother does not use the Internet, but heard about Mr. Mohsin in
the community. Her daughter, she said, does not meet Muslim men. They want to attend the next
Millanus, scheduled for March 20.
FARRAH MOHSIN, the financial adviser’s daughter, is 23 and unmarried; not ready, she said.
She is the master of ceremonies at Millanus, which she said is “like letting your kids out to play
on the playground.”
“Always smile,” Ms. Mohsin advised the participants at the fall event. “Even if you don’t like
the person you’re sitting with.”
To break the ice, she distributed pink cards with handwritten questions.
“A man’s job is to bring in the dough. A woman’s job is to bake it. Agree?”
“Do you take a 5 p.m. break for Adhan from work?
“How long should you know someone before being married?”
A man in pleated khakis and an oversize button-down shirt sat down across from a female law
student. She had attended a dating event at a mosque in Seattle, but the men and women there
had glared at each other from opposite sides of the room, unable to interact one on one.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Seattle,” she answered.
“That’s far,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“How is the weather there?” he ventured.
“Don’t you know?” she said.
No one seemed comfortable. One woman, a 35-year-old doctor, was so outraged by the presence
of a video journalist that she threatened to file a lawsuit if her image were broadcast, demanded a
refund and left before the speed-dating started. Another, an Egyptian-born consultant, scouted
the men from the hallway: if she liked what she saw, she would pay the cover charge.
Khan Muhammad, 52, came to support his 40-year-old cousin from Maryland, but he remained
wary. “I’m still very much into the family tribe system, but society has been changed,” he said.
“Now the kids, they want to see the partner before they sign. When you live here, you must
adapt. But with respect.”
MATCHMAKER Jamal Mohsin, standing in tie, is an organizer of the event.
Amna, a 26-year-old graduate student in mental health who spoke on the condition her last name
not be printed because she did not want people to know she had attended the event, said of her
generation, “We are definitely torn between two worlds.”
“American culture, at times, clashes with Islam,” she said. “But the beauty is that as we are
struggling to find our place, and we’re critically examining our parents’ cultural practices.”
For example, she says, her Muslim friends at college are now starting to meet each other, not
through families, but directly. Still, she said, they always meet in public places to ensure “they
don’t cross the line.”
Amna considers herself a liberal Muslim: she supports abortion rights, and same-sex marriage.
But she wears a veil, which she fears deters liberal suitors.
Sadaf, a 33-year-old physician from Princeton, N.J., who also refused to have her full name
published, has butterscotch skin and compact curls reminiscent of Bernadette Peters’s. “Guys at
work are always hitting on me,” she said. “But they aren’t Muslims.”
Being a conservative Muslim woman with a successful career, she said, is challenging. There
were two Muslim men in her medical school, and both were married. Men she meets at the
mosque want wives who will stay at home, Sadaf said; the educated elite, she added, prefer
Western women. “I am American and I am professional, and you get punished for that,” she said.
Sadaf said her older sister, Sarah, long married, had dragged her to Millanus. After each fiveminute “date,” Sadaf glared at Sarah, who was watching from an adjacent table — close enough
to observe that the men were “old enough to be uncles.”
Most exchanges sound more like business networking than a litmus test of personal chemistry.
Not only were the men too old, Sadaf complained, their mindset was “too Pakistani.” And they
did not fit Sadaf’s definition of “professional.”
One drove his uncle’s taxi. Another managed a convenience store. Of 30 men in the room, there
were two lawyers and one doctor.
At intermission, about half of the participants went to a back room to offer their prayers. A 29year-old woman named Maria, who works as an art director for a major television channel, went
to her parents to complain that some of her “dates” did not know what an art director was.
“Some of the men are very removed from this culture, even though they live here,” she said.
“I need a drink,” said one exhausted bachelor. He did not mean Kool-Aid.
AFTER the final date rotation, everyone swarmed the buffet — except Mr. Baig, who as
promised, chased down Mr. Imtiaz, the lanky information technologist, who had come to the
United States, alone, from Islamabad five years before.
The older man invited the younger over to a table with his daughter and wife, and instantly
started interrogating him, asking if he drinks, smokes, prays, about his legal status, his job, and
his family’s background.
“Honesty is very important,” Mr. Baig said. “We aren’t a very, very religious family, but we are
religious.”
“I agree,” said Mr. Imtiaz, looking down.
“You don’t have to say anything now,” Mr. Baig said, trying to reassure him. “We are talking
frankly, and we are talking heart to heart.”
“I’m interested,” Mr. Imtiaz said, still looking down.
Unconvinced, Mr. Baig went a step further in trying to impress.
“My daughter was born in the U.S.,” he noted. “She’s a medical student. She’s getting a master’s
in the medical field of nursing. It’s a $100,000 field.”
“I like your honesty,” Mr. Imtiaz said.
The daughter chimed in for the first time.
“Medical field demand is high,” she said. “After I graduate, inshallah, I will take an exam to
graduate, which is not a problem. My school has a 100 percent rate on the test. I will have a job
by September.”
The mother did not say a word. She was busy stacking up empty cups.
“She will get a good job,” Mr. Baig said of the daughter. “She is brilliant.”
He turned to Mr. Imtiaz. “Are you willing to settle in this country?” he asked. “I just want to be
clear.”
“Yes,” Mr. Imtiaz said.
After several minutes of discussing whether the couple should stay in touch over e-mail or
telephone, Mr. Imtiaz proposed calling on either Friday, Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Mr. Baig
offered his consent.
The two men embraced.
Mr. Imtiaz, shy and formal, had hardly gotten in two sentences at once during the entire 15minute conversation with the boisterous Mr. Baig.
“I got six numbers today,” he said. “She is a very educated girl. I don’t play games. I need to
know how she thinks about life? Kids? Is she willing to relocate somewhere?”
A few weeks later, Mr. Baig answered the phone in a solemn voice. His enthusiastic manner had
faded.
“It’s not too good, to be honest with you,” he said softly. “I’m not too happy with the guy. He
called once. I was busy, and he never called again.”