|
It's hard enough to meet the man or woman of your dreams if your requirements are restricted to the usual criteria: tall or short, athletic or artistic, smoker or non-smoker.
Add adherence to the tenets of Islam to the list and you're looking at a pretty limited pool of potential partners in most Canadian cities.
An Ottawa-based group is trying to help local Muslims connect by organizing singles events, including a tea recently. "We're trying to fill a gap that's needed in our community," says Sameena Khan, a 32-year-old married mother of three who runs North American Muslim Matrimonial Links (NAMMLINKS), a group concentrating its efforts in the Ottawa area for the time being. "There's no events for single people."
Unlike some singles trolling the personals, practising Muslims aren't just looking for "a good time."
Extramarital sex is forbidden and Muslims are encouraged to marry in order to avoid temptation, according to Bader Siddiqi, president of the Ottawa Muslim Association.
Marriage should ideally be within the faith and most Canadian Muslims live up to that ideal. Only nine per cent marry people of other religions, compared to 16 per cent of Catholics, 17 per cent of Jews and 21 per cent of Protestants, according to a report by Statistics Canada released last fall.
Traditionally, Muslims find a marriage partner through family or friends. But many Muslims in Canada are immigrants and some don't have family or an extended social network here. Some find a spouse through family back home. Others may resort to online matrimonial services such as Muslim Marriage Link and Qiran.com ("matches made in heaven").
NAMMLINKS offers Ottawa Muslims an alternative to the online marriage market.
The group hosted its first event in November, a singles tea to celebrate the end of Ramadan. A second tea was attended by about 40 single, divorced or widowed women and men.
The event was meant as an opportunity for Muslim singles to do a little "window shopping," said Khan -- a chance to check each other out within an Islamically correct context.
That's not easy to do, given that the Qur'an counsels women and men to "lower their gaze" and not look each other in the eye. But "You can take one good glance," says Khan, laughing. No alcohol was served and there were no one-on-one encounters between women and men.
There were prayers and a celebration of Eid-ul-Adha -- the end of the Haj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
But otherwise the tea at Efes, a Turkish restaurant, was much like any other speed-dating encounter. Strangers sitting at tables of four (two women, two men) sized each other up in 10-minute "dates," discussing set topics (marriage, spiritual and career goals, hobbies and interests) in an attempt to determine if someone is worth meeting again.
But don't call it dating. There is no such thing for practising Muslims, who believe men and women should not be alone together unless they're married or related to each other, explains Khan.
And instead of catering to people looking for romance or sex, the goal was hooking up for strictly matrimonial purposes.
"Speed meeting" might be a better term, suggested Aamer Uraizee, a 38-year-old divorced systems engineer who attended the tea in the hopes of meeting a potential wife.
Originally from India, Uraizee describes himself as "not very religious." Still, he wants to meet a nice Muslim girl.
It wouldn't hurt if she were good-looking, he admits. "Definitely, there is always that factor." Above all, he wants to meet someone who takes "the ups and downs of life" in stride.
Other participants had more specific criteria. Mudassir Abbas, a 26-year-old software developer from Pakistan, lives with his parents and was looking for a Pakistani woman who would get along with her in-laws.
Audrey Saparno, a 36-year-old federal government researcher who wears a hijab, doesn't care if her future husband shares her Indonesian background.
She would like him to be attractive -- beauty is one of the criteria the Prophet Muhummad said should be considered when assessing a potential spouse, she points out. But for her, looks are not the main thing.
Her top priority is that he must be religious, like her. "Religion is very important to me," she says, adding it's the "cornerstone of the family."
This time around, Saparno didn't meet anyone she liked enough to see again. "No one really caught my fancy."
But if she had, she would have approached the matter as a very serious business. "You kind of interview the person. You kind of know what it is you're looking for in your future spouse, so you need to screen people out." She would even check his "references" -- "You can ask the person if you can speak to their friends."
They would get to know each within the strict bounds of propriety dictated by Islam. Meetings would take place in public or in each other's homes with family members present as chaperones. They would not be alone in a car, go to a movie or be in any other venue where they might find themselves in an intimate setting. And if they weren't serious about marriage after a few meetings, they would stop seeing each other, she says.
Dima Khanafer, a 26-year-old programmer-analyst who works for Health Canada, agrees young people have plenty of opportunities to meet. She's still single but knows a couple who met while working on a project together at university and eventually got married.
For now, she's willing to wait to meet her "Naseeb" -- her soul mate or destiny. "It's in our Islamic law that each one has his Naseeb." But she doesn't rule out resorting to events like the ones organized by NAMMLINKS in the future. If you're young and at university, "You'll probably find more Muslims because everyone's studying, so you meet more people," she says.
As you get older, "it becomes a bit more difficult," she admits
|
