Naseeb.com: The halal equivalent of 'mySpace'
By Ramo Feenah

(All names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved).

For reasons that are unspeakably obvious to some people, and entirely indecipherable to others, many people want to date and/or marry someone within their culture or religion. This ordinarily doesn’t pose a problem unless your preferences are rare. You may think that this constraint falls severely on Navajo speakers or the occasional Baha’i eking out a living in the mid-west. You may not think that it would apply to one of the world’s major religions. Try explaining that to a Muslim in America. The CIA factbook puts Muslims at 1% of the US population. So if you've decided to marry or date within the faith, you've already lopped off 99% of the people out there. Cut that in half again to obtain the appropriate gender. Cut it by a sixth to get the approximate age group. What you’re left with is a line to use on your next date: "You're 1 in 1,200!" And we haven't even begun to sort through to find people who have similar ethnic origins, educational backgrounds, income levels, geographic proximity, or attraction. In addition, as with any religious group, there is an array of socio-religious considerations on what is and isn't appropriate that has to be worked through. Take heart, all you single Muslims: you’re victims of the inexorable laws of probability, not ugliness.

	Naseeb.com

How do people deal with this issue? The mate market is just that: a market. The traditional tool deployed to bring buyers and sellers together is a broker. Your aunt’s friend’s second cousin heard about this one guy who is a doctor and from a good family, and even though he is slightly cross-eyed, you should meet him. This kind of thing is widely accepted in most communities, but it has been known to have some severe shortcomings. For one thing, there is a lot of pressure. It is one thing to be attracted to someone, quite another to like them enough to date them, and a third thing entirely to commit yourself for your entire life. Westerners take months at the least, and usually years, to go through the cycle. Muslims are expected to do it in 45 minutes over a cup of tea.

Another problem with this approach is that all one has is first impressions. Horror stories abound. Naima, the editor of an online magazine, complained that her date asked for the contact information of the cover model of that particular month’s issue. To make matters worse, the aunt in charge of setting them up decided to try and help him out by trying to find the model. Just to show you how far it went, when the model told her mother about the story, the mother wanted more information about the potential suitor. This doesn’t happen in communities that have more than 1 in a 100 to pick from!

To my sophisticated readers, the loose social connection “method” may seem hopelessly ill advised, but what else is there? For one thing, who really knows what happens between two people when they decide they’re mutually compatible. You peruse potentials and something takes a hold. And there develops a sense that the faster you go through people, the faster you’ll arrive upon the person that you decide, on balance, is indispensable to your well-being. Only the most delirious indulgers of hyperbole would claim that technology is going to “solve” love. But sifting through lots of potentials quickly is the kind of problem that search technology was invented to solve.

Is it any wonder that "everyone" seems to be on Naseeb? When Naseeb.com first burst on the scene, it was a greeted with anticipation, anxiety and curiousity. Online communities such as Orkut and Friendster were already ubiquitous, as were more specific variants such as Jdate. But Muslims are latecomers to popular culture. We don't even have, for instance, a recognizable Hollywood actor or a major rock band. I’ll politely leave aside debates on Omar Sharif and Junoon to return to the point. So here we had our very own linked online community. But what makes it “muslim?” For one thing, Naseeb threw in some good old muslim iconography. It judiciously deploys Arabic and ethnicity where it can. The icon is a brown guy with an accent. You can send "Salaams" the way some sites have “ice-breakers” or “smiles.” They also have some controls over use of language and they censor pictures. Beyond that, the community determines itself. As is so typical, people band together according to their tastes. You can join discussions of a Surah, “Sex and the City,” or just how to interpret the prohibition on charging interest.

Because Naseeb cannot openly admit to dating, it led the other major online communities in what might be considered avenues for non-physical interaction. Naseeb was ahead of Friendster in incorporating both chat and blogs (“journals” on Naseeb). This means you can interact to your heart’s content without ever having to ask someone out, pick out the outfit, and splurge on the mushroom risotto your date is going to scarf down with abandon. Instead, when an animal lover comments on the plight of Katrina’s animals, you can riff on leatherwear. It has all the benefits and liabilities of Internet interaction. You don’t know who the other person is but on the other hand the other person’s personality comes through in ways that a crowded, loud bar just won’t support.

So how effective is Naseeb? In spite of all this talk of community, and meeting like-minded people, the driving force behind the enthusiastic growth is the possibility of romance. This technology allows social interactions, but it doesn't solve social problems. When Kamran, a 29 year old banker, first logged on to Naseeb he was happy to see a few notes in his inbox. "They were about 3 emails, all of them from 16 year old hijaabis in England," he said disappointed. "What did they think we had in common?" Kamran decided he might be better off approaching someone. He emailed a more appropriate 25 year old a brief email asking her out for coffee. He describes her response as angry. "She tore my head off for even asking. I had no idea what I had done wrong.”

When meaningful encounters do take place, it is usually after a period of maturing, understanding, experimenting and searching. One enthusiastically described her favorite date as “The most normal person I have ever met!” Naseeb has its fair share of success stories. It loudly proclaims various successes when you log in, and it is not uncommon to know couples who met on it. With over 200,000 members as of this writing, you’d expect the primordial soup to bear life at some point. The point is that Naseeb is just another venue and not a magic solution with similar, if not identical, problems to “real life” venues. It is ironic that Naseeb is, in what is does, so similar to what old fashioned auntie mongering does: it is essentially a self-service introduction system. It doesn’t make you look better, or come up with good lines for your date. It presents your biodata/profile and through your circle of friends and indication of your social standing. Perhaps Naseeb is better thought of as a robot auntie. Naseeb is tirelessly searches out people for you, presents backgrounds, but without all the perseverance, or the encouragement. Some people benefit from the space; others may require a push. There are some auntie services that don’t lend themselves to automation.

Images Courtesy Corbis and Naseeb.com