LONDON: A UK-based dating app is bringing back its halal speed dating events next month to help Muslims find their perfect partner.
The events, organized by singlemuslim.com, will be hosted by British-Moroccan comedian Fatiha El-Ghorri, and the organizers said that for the first time chaperones will also be able to attend.
“It’s been two years of single Muslims not really being able to meet or get out there and we’ve got a huge demand from the platform from people saying please bring your event back,” Adeem Younis, the app’s founder and chairman, told Arab News.
“A lot of our members — the prerequisite is that they are Muslim — still want to be able to meet people face to face in a halal environment that’s not going to be their living room or their home, and we facilitated a number of these pre-COVID and they were very successful,” he said.
2/2 0ver 100 single Muslims will be attending the event in search for a marriage partner. You could find the one #London #MuslimLondon #Halal #MuslimWomen #Nikkah #HalalDating #Muslimentrepreneur #UKMuslims #MuslimsoftheWorld #Islamicevent
— SingleMuslim.com (@SingleMuslimCom) January 18, 2022
Each of the full-day events — to be held in London, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds — will be open to up to 50 men and 50 women of all ages. The participants will have the option to take a chaperone and will meet in both formal and informal settings. Dinner and prayer facilities will also be provided.
“And you’ll have a world-class comedian who’s breaking the ice and compering and hosting the entire day, making it fun for everybody,” Younis said.
El-Ghorri, a Londoner who has appeared on the Jonathan Ross and Russell Howard shows, has a huge fan base within the Muslim community, but is also popular with mainstream audiences. She is also a member of the app.
“Finding the right partner when you are Muslim can be really challenging as culturally, we don’t really date,” she said.
“When we meet someone, it is expected that we will marry that person and it’s very important that your parents approve your choice of partner, so bringing your dad along to the event kills two birds with one stone.”
British-Moroccan comedian Fatiha El-Ghorri will be hosting and compering the entire day for the first time. (Supplied/Singlemuslim.com)
The event in London is expected to be particularly popular as it falls closest to Valentine’s Day.
“It’s a weekend of love and now, post-COVID, with a new year and fresh start, people have set their agenda.” Younis said.
“A lot of people are wanting to get married this year … what better way to do that than by attending a halal speed dating event?”
Singlemuslim.com was set up in 1999 and is one of the world’s world’s largest Muslim dating apps. Younis said the company had received a lot of requests from its members in Dubai, the UAE and Egypt to take halal speed dating to their countries.
He said the company would use the event formula as a roadmap to take it internationally, starting with the Arab market.
“Finding a life partner is difficult and challenging, especially within the Arab communities in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East as people have become more urbanized,” he said.
About 5 percent of the apps members are from Saudi Arabia, where there is huge demand, especially as its digital savvy market is opening up more.
“We want to empower not just Muslim females, but anybody who’s Muslim to choose their own marriage partner, and the halal speed dating event is somewhere they can come and do that,” Younis said.
