The New Matchmakers in Pakistan: the Web and TV

A good man is especially hard to find in this deeply religious country, where bars are nonexistent, unchaperoned conversation between single men and women is frowned upon, and immigration has frayed the neighborhood and family ties that have nurtured arranged marriages for centuries.

So when Amber Khan’s parents told her it was time to get married, the 23-year-old fashion student turned to a new matchmaking resource: the Internet.

Khan posted an ad for a husband on Mehndi.com, a “matrimonial” website tailored to Pakistanis. A few weeks later, she was drowning in marriage proposals -- 20 at last count. Her mother is helping her sort through the offerings, and Khan is giddy about the change in her life and her society.

“Everyone has the right to choose their own life partner,” Khan said. “They can choose, they can select, they can communicate with them -- they can even meet them before they’re married.”

The enthusiasm with which increasing numbers of Pakistanis such as Khan have embraced online matchmaking casts a spotlight on the constant tension between modernity and tradition in this overwhelmingly Muslim country.

Even as hard-line religious parties pick up seats in Pakistan’s parliament and local headlines are dominated by fears of fundamentalist terrorism, cable television replete with uncensored Western entertainment has become widely available. Clerics bemoan an upswing in “love matches,” divorce, liaisons between unmarried couples and an overall decline in morals.

One new television program, in which men and women go on the air and describe their soul mates, then receive e-mail proposals from viewers, has swiftly gone from must-shun to must-see TV. Nadia Mazhar, a producer of the “Shaadi Online” show, says it is part of a revolution that has brought to Pakistan’s masses the sort of power over their personal lives that was once available only to the country’s more secular elite.

“If you go to the middle class,” Mazhar said, “this is a big deal to them -- ‘We can do this!’ ”

With increasing numbers of Pakistanis exposed to Western culture and ideas through the media, study abroad and emigration, as well as better education at home for women, many think a liberalization of sexual attitudes was inevitable. But the scene here is a long way from the freewheeling romantic marketplace of the Western world, as Pakistanis try to adapt new resources to their customs.

For generations, Pakistani parents have arranged their children’s marriages, occasionally with the help of a marriage broker. Often, people marry members of their extended family, such as cousins. New couples frequently live with the husband’s parents.

The system ensures strong, stable marriages, said Mohammed Hussain, a teacher and administrator at Naeema Islamic University in Lahore. “If a marriage is between families,” he said, “every person of both families will try to keep the marriage together.”

This centuries-old system is being eroded by a new-media age that preaches Western-style relationships, Hussain said, lamenting the loss of local tradition that he believes also meets Islamic requirements, in which elders should be in charge of their children’s lives.

The new matchmaking mediums usually stress that they are intended as tools for marriage rather than casual relationships. Parents can post on Mehndi.com and similar websites on behalf of their children, and all pictures displayed are, says Mehndi founder Hayee Bokhari, “modest.”

But there’s no guarantee that the sites won’t be used for dating. Bokhari, a Pakistani who lives in Canada and launched Mehndi.com in March, estimates that half his users seek dates rather than matrimony. That seems natural to him.

“You just have to show people the way, and they’ll find their own path to happiness,” Bokhari said.

Although it’s a path increasingly being taken by Muslims around the world, the use of the Internet to find a partner has acquired an unsavory taint in some quarters of Pakistan. Newspaper columnists bemoan unseemly surfing in the Internet cafes that have sprouted in even the smallest towns. In one notorious case, several couples met in a private room of one cafe for sexual liaisons, unaware they were being videotaped.

Online streaming video is a cautionary tale for the country’s traditionalists but a matter of amusement for Pakistan’s new generation of Web surfers, such as Mariam Alam.

The 21-year-old Islamabad teacher cruises Internet chat rooms and has arranged dates with numerous men -- “I’ve lost count.”

Often, she said, the relationships don’t last beyond the third date, and usually revolve around secret meetings in cars so as not to destroy Alam’s reputation. She was prepared to marry one of the men, she said, but had to call off the wedding when her father found she’d met her fiance online.

“You can’t tell [your parents] it was on the Internet. They won’t take you seriously,” Alam said. “It’s the generation gap.”

Alam said women of her generation are discovering the joys of having careers and control over their lives. That naturally leads to resistance to the old institution of arranged marriages. Of the last seven arranged marriages she’s attended, she said, five have already ended in divorce.

Ten years ago, Mohammed Saleem married his cousin in an arranged union before moving to Britain. To his dismay, he discovered that his wife was a woman of Western ideals who was against the wedding but had kept silent out of a sense of familial duty. The couple separated four years ago.

Alone in a strange country, Saleem joined Internet chat groups. Last year, he started chatting with a 32-year-old woman back in Pakistan who seemed interesting. “When will you get married?” he asked her.

“Ask Allah,” was the reply.

That was enough for Saleem. “When I found her trust in God, I found that she was a true girl,” he said.

He called his brother in Pakistan and asked him to visit the woman’s house and convey his marriage proposal. In December, they were married.

Saleem, who has moved to the city of Rawalpindi to be with his new wife, is optimistic that this match will last. “We knew each other before marriage, and we knew we were going to make a family,” he said.

That’s the sort of edge that Sofia Raheel is looking for in her next marriage. Her first, an arranged one to a cousin, ended in October.

The 35-year-old’s quest for an eligible bachelor landed her in the television studio.

Raheel was one of three “candidates” on a recent episode of “Shaadi Online,” in which she and her parents detailed the type of man she was seeking: studious and sincere. She says the greater options provided by the show are important.

“For females, our family’s choices are not many,” said Raheel, whose episode hasn’t aired yet.

Even for men, spouse-hunting in Pakistan has been no picnic. Take Asif Iqbal-Naz, a Lahore travel agent who has been looking for six months for a woman who fits his criteria.

His complaint will sound familiar to anyone who’s been single: “Noble, honest, smart and well-educated,” he lamented, “are not available.” No eligible woman in his small extended family fit that bill. He’s not allowed to interact with women at work or meet them socially. So, at his parents’ urging, Iqbal-Naz called “Shaadi Online.”

“This way, you’re in contact with so many people,” he said. “Otherwise, the search is confined. You just have your own circle.”

The show is about to extend its reach -- the producers are preparing a searchable online database of marriage candidates and will air the program via satellite in the U.S. in July. The show already airs in the Persian Gulf state of Dubai, home to a sizable Pakistani community.

Part of the success of “Shaadi Online” lies in the fact that people like Raheel and Iqbal-Naz do not see it as contrary to Pakistani tradition. The producers interview the parents of the “candidate” as well as the bachelor or bachelorette. The express goal is marriage.

But many agree that the show is quietly revolutionary. Among them is Abdur Rauf, head of the division of Geo TV that produces the show. “What TV should do,” he said, “is create an ideal culture in the minds of people toward which they want to move.”

Rauf is already planning for another program to push the boundaries of Pakistani relationships. His idea may sound familiar to American viewers: Film a woman meeting her suitors, and end the program with a flourish when she decides whom she will marry.