Finding Your Soul Mate: The Problem with Salams (And Muslim Dating Apps In General)

For the average Gen Z or Millennial American Muslim ready to embark on the mind-boggling journey of marriage, love is just a swipe away. Yes, you read that correctly. We, the single Muslims trying to find halal connections that lead to marriage, swipe profiles on Muslim dating apps, hoping (and praying) we match with our potential spouse.

While the Muslim dating apps are no new phenomenon (est. circa 2013), they have only recently become less stigmatized as young Muslims realize the opportunities to meet like-minded Muslims are few and far between post-undergrad. No longer waiting for our parents to find matches, we’ve dived deep into the complexities of online dating.

Image courtesy of Tumisu from Pixabay

While there are many Muslim developers attempting to enter the dating/marriage app market, there are only two worthy competitors in the space: Muzmatch and Minder. The former is known for a place to meet more “religious” potentials. It has all the same bells and whistles as Minder, but its founder, Shahzad Younas, makes a concerted effort to remind his users to incorporate Islamic etiquette in one’s search for a spouse.

In contrast, Minder is notorious for meeting, well…less than honorable suitors. Minder, who changed their name to Salams in October 2020, is filled with “Wallahbros” and “Ramys” (i.e. Muslim men looking for a girlfriend or a good time — not wives).

Why the sudden re-brand? To quote Shakespeare’s Romeo, “What’s in a name?” Well, when it comes to the name Minder — A LOT.

Minder is of course a play on the name of the mainstream dating app, Tinder, infamous for being a hookup app. The Muslim men using Minder seem to be caricatures of Muslim men played on television (i.e. Ramy). Not only do they admit to drinking or smoking, but they’re usually sexist, racist or perverted.

Some men ask women for pictures without their scarves, and others ask for your shoe size (my encounter with the foot fetish guy). While this may not be anything out of the ordinary for the average Tinder user, the behavior exhibited on Minder is shocking for practicing Muslim women looking to meet practicing Muslim men.

Image courtesy of State of Minder

These exploits are so egregious that some brave and exasperated soul created a private account on Instagram called “State of Minder” to publicly shame the men whose discussions on the app are so far from Islamic etiquette that they must be called out. The admin of the page — who keeps her identity hidden — posts screenshots she receives from other Muslim women who have engaged in conversations with Minder men who are overly sexual and spend their time catfishing women while already married. For those attempting to have extramarital affairs, she blasts them in her IG story, making sure the community knows to stay away from them.

With all this behavior, it’s no wonder the creators of Minder changed their name to “Salams” in hopes that a more wholesome name would lead to more wholesome behavior.

Yet, instead of a press release announcing their motives, Minder’s developers relied on several Black Muslim influencers to promote the new name, an interesting avenue given that there are so few Black and African users on Minder(or any platform really.) Now, whether Black or African Muslims feel alienated on these sites and choose to jump off them, or whether they never gain traction in those circles to begin with, remains unknown. Based on my own experience, it’s the former. 

Nevertheless, Salams made a very deliberate effort to use Black Muslims in their rebranding campaign. Across their Instagram stories during the name change announcement, we saw prominent Millennial Muslims like Moses the Comic and Youssef Kromah in cutesy, funny videos praising Salams as an effective way to meet like-minded Muslims for marriage. 

After watching the rollout, and talking to other fellow users, I couldn’t help but wonder if Salams was simply jumping on the bandwagon of non-Blacks seeking to gain followers as they become public advocates of Black people. Just like the rest of the country that capitalizes on attracting Black people based on supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, I must admit I was skeptical as to whether Salams’ efforts were genuine.

Image courtesy of Andrej Lisakov on Unsplash

But our tradition teaches us to give people the benefit of the doubt, no matter how suspect they appear. In that vein, perhaps Salams has chosen to confront the racism in the Muslim community by inspiring inclusivity amongst its users. Perhaps they’re aware that Black Muslim users are greatly outnumbered by South Asian and Arab users who often implicitly or explicitly choose to swipe right only on those in their own ethnic groups.

There are countless times when I’ve swiped left on profiles where people specifically mention seeking an “Arabic speaking woman” or one who “must know how to make roti.” Although Arab and South Asian men do swipe “right” on me (a Black and Latina American woman), once we move past bits of superficial conversation, parental expectations come to light and the prospective relationship dissipates. Either the man doesn’t know what his parents would say about them marrying a Black girl or they know it will be a hard-fought battle and decide it (i.e me) is not worth fighting for. When I do run into the few Black and African users on Minder, I notice they too are tired of dealing with the exclusion and have taken to writing on their profiles, “if you’re racist or ethnocentric swipe left.”

So maybe — just maybe — Salams is the hero here. Maybe they’ve recognized the inequities on their app. Maybe they want to rid the playing field of the prejudiced, bigoted, perverted users and bring back the virtues needed to forge halal relationships aimed at marriage. Only time will tell if such efforts will be effective in creating a clean, welcoming space for young Muslims of all colors. InshaAllah, we all find what we’re looking for, on or off the apps.

Nailah Dean is a lawyer and creative writer living in San Francisco. Her current project is a memoir about the Muslim dating world.