Posted on 02/12/2016 1:36:18 PM PST by nickcarraway
At Halal Speed Dating, all matchmaking sessions begin with a talk on marriage in Islam. Women must be accompanied to the event by a chaperone - typically a parent.
Imagine going on a first date with someone and having your parents beside you to give you advice. That is what happens at Halal Speed Dating, a matchmaking service founded in 2015 in Muslim-majority Malaysia.
The goal is to provide a respectable, Sharia-compliant way of finding a spouse through a process similar to typical speed dating, where men and women are given five minutes to get to know each other before moving on to the next candidate.
Afterwards, the organisers check for matches - which woman indicated interest in men who were interested in them and vice versa - but that is where the similarities to conventional speed dating end.
At Halal Speed Dating, all matchmaking sessions begin with a talk on marriage in Islam. Women must be accompanied to the event by a chaperone - typically a parent - and after the session, a man matched with an interested woman has to call the woman's father first for his permission to proceed.
Even then, however, the organisers discourage unsupervised dating.
The FAQ section of Halal Speed Dating's website states: "The traditional way of dating is faster and more efficient by including the guardians and family members in the process. More importantly, it avoids fitnah (slander), heartbreak, premarital pregnancy, premarital sex, abandoned babies and all 50 Shades of Haram."
This is something co-founders Munirah Tunai and her husband Zahri Yuhyi believe in, having met using a matchmaking platform themselves before getting married after five months of chaperoned interaction.
"In Islam, yes, of course you have to involve the father actually, because the father is the lady’s guardian," Munirah tells Channel NewsAsia. "So if a guy wants to get married to a lady, it's after receiving the permission of the father. So that's why we'd like to get the father involved as early as possible."
About 5,700 people have signed up for Halal Speed Dating, typically working professionals aged between 25 to 35 who are too busy to meet people the "normal" way. The long-term goal for participants is marriage and that is a condition applicants must agree to at registration.
So far, Halal Speed Dating has had three events, resulting in about 20 couples who are now seriously discussing marriage. The demand is there for more events, but there is one problem.
"Our challenge is to find men actually because out of that 5,700 people who registered, basically just one-third of them are men," Munirah laments. "Of course, the ladies will always ask us: 'Why don't you organise more, bigger events?' But then again sure we can do that, but if there's not enough men, what's the point?"
Halal Speed Dating is now on the lookout for more eligible Muslim men for their participants. They are also considering expanding to other countries, after some participants came to Kuala Lumpur from as far as Singapore for their matchmaking sessions.
Five hundred Shades of Haram!
Five Thousand shades of HARAM!!!
Alternative version, send your men to another country and support rape/intermarriage of the locals.
Sounds like it would all be a grab bag.
I see what you did there.
Hey, we gotta sharia-compliant match! She's 12 and he's fine with that!
“About 5,700 people have signed up for Halal Speed Dating, typically working professionals aged between 25 to 35 who are too busy to meet people the “normal” way.”
Yeah, all that bomb-making really cuts into a guys time to meet underage girls the traditional way.
“where men and women are given five minutes to get to know each other before moving on to the next candidate.”
Say what? I'm a Pedophile? Why that's an awfully big word for a 12 year old!
If you check for matches, you need to check for TNT also.
It only takes about five minutes to ask her if she prefers chains or rope, a belt or a stick. One cold wrap it up quickly.
Alternative version, send your men to another country and support rape/intermarriage of the locals.
The religion of cavemen.
We need the “its so easy a caveman can do it” actor to start doing commercials for Islam.
And just think of how much having dad right there cuts down on all those honor killings? Saves a lot of time.
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