Who Needs Muzz?

Today I watched three episodes of Muslim Matchmaking on Hulu as the snow started falling on DC tonight. As I'm not walking to Brazilian jiu-jitsu in this weather, I decided to be unproductive. Thank you to my lovely friend Liv for putting me on and keeping up with the culture to a degree that genuinely surprises me.

Muslim Matchmaking on Hulu is the new entry in the realm of ____ Matchmaking shows. There's something super millennial about these shows: quippy zinger reactions, exaggerated active listening, and anxiety about material success that remind me of my older cousins. These are Muslims whose minds are swirling with the transition from being grunts to managers, who have developed prefrontal cortexes, and who rock purses with that swirly pseudo-calligraphic live, laugh, love Muslim font that's everywhere these days, peddled like crack in the 80s by overpriced Etsy shops to newly minted Muslim housewives / remote tech workers.

After three episodes, I don't hate the show. I'm actually surprised that I don't hate it, given that it's people playing out obviously contrived conversational beats and who are a little too stilted on a camera. I've never been one for reality TV anyway. I don't like the cutaway to pre or post-recorded commentary on an encounter, the inorganic pacing for conversation or conflict, and it bugs me how romance in reality TV usually ends with a fight, whereas, in my experience, it more often ends in the slow trailing off of emotion, like a sentence aimed at someone walking away.

It has a good amount going for it. Each of the suitors so far obviously has some readily apparent baggage and an easy-to-define aesthetic that makes them "fit for TV," but they seem to be on the spectrum of polite company to genuinely pleasant. I could talk to everyone on the show so far at a masjid picnic and daresay would enjoy talking to most. Not that I'm a great metric for quality company. And the hosts are far more compassionate and empathetic than the infamous Seema Auntie from Indian matchmaking, whose barefaced tolerance of harmful stereotypes, folk "wisdom," and plain shitty people did not allow me to get to a third episode. The lovely Hoda and Yasmin are able to connect to individuals of diverse Islamic interpretations and cultural contexts. Their stable of prospects is not a copy-pasted Instagram perfect list of fit-fluencer hijabis who also run a modest fashion brand and cook like Ramsey: they're regular, young Muslim Americans who live normally as stable, relatively mature people.

I think most of the cringe, for me, is from the show's format. It is a dating show where the participants can't really date, leaving the viewer with few organic interactions between the individuals. I can't help but shake my head at how the presence of cameras at critical romantic times casts an artificial light on a conflict, refusing to let it breathe and really create tension. When Fulani tells Omniya that he is not looking for a long-term relationship, the camera does a quick cut between them, looking for her disgruntled reaction until we go back to talking heads. In my life, when I have had to drop a dealbreaker on a potential romantic partner like a guillotine blade, the worst part is the silence afterwards. Sitting, standing, walking in the same space as someone who, like you, may have wanted a different answer. You may become acutely aware of temperature, of the reddening of your face or the cool bead of sweat going down your neck. But no, we must move on to another couple who is going through a different issue but who gets the same treatment.

The problems of these couples, to me, were typical of many Muslims looking for spouses, not lovers. Of course your Muslim go-getter type A woman is actually love-starved and can't set boundaries! She so obviously wants romance, despite her (and everyone else as far as I can tell) never using the L-word. What is it with Muslims and love? Can't we pray for love? Can't we pray to He who loves us with 99 parts of the 100 parts of mercy? Who made Muhammad (S), who we call the Habib, the Beloved? It should not be a shameful or even unorthodox thing to say that we want to be loved more than we want to be "successful" or "content" or God forbid, "stable." Alhamdullilah for those things, of course, Alhamdullilah for success and comfort and contentment. But my God, it seems like no one is discussing love in this show because they're afraid that they'll have to acknowledge it's what they're really missing.

I may be missing the point, as a Certified Lover Boy¹. While living on my own at 22, with fairly interesting hobbies and a decent-paying job in an "acceptable" industry, makes me "ahead of the curve" in terms of marriage, I'm way too early in life for the serious marriage conversations that start when you can see signs for the highway exit to 30. My poor romantic decisions have little real consequences and I still think that I could attain a new love potent enough to be my first and only love. Romance is still the center of my imagined experience of a Muslim marriage, but I'm not sure if the characters on this show have ceased thinking in these terms, or if they never have in the first place. I have heard from my fellow Muslims that they're often surprised that, as a man, I think so much about love and relationships. That saddens me. As a man who loves women, even without Islam, do I not want a woman to say she loves me with her eyes? Do I not want to be cared for and valued? Just because I was born a man, because I like Star Wars and martial arts, because I think about the Roman Empire at least once a week (try living in DC and not seeing marble), should I not want to be the object of affection and ardor?

And as a Muslim man, should I not seek true love? The Prophet and his Companions were men who spoke openly about their love: for Allah, for their brothers in faith and blood alike, for the Arabic language, for poetry and good clothing, and for the women in their lives. The purported lovelessness of marriage, in this show and in my life, often seems to be an everpresent elephant that many will admit to in private, but not to a potential marriage prospect (or to the judgemental Muslim public, imagined or real). The presence of the Muslim audience's gaze on the show's participants is subtle but present. When Nooreen and Faheem have a drink at an arcade, I wondered what was in their glasses. Nooreen mentioned that her lightly amber-colored drink was ginger ale, and it was implied by Faheem's attempt at humor that he too was drinking the same, but my guy had a pink beverage and proceeded to talk about pre-gaming before parties. As a Muslim Bangladeshi from New York, I assume he's making a tacit admission to drinking socially, but I'm not 100% sure. Give it 70% on my behalf, don't quote me to God as assigning a sin to my brother.

But regardless of my greater issues with Muslims not being open about their emotional needs in the courtship / dating process, I think the show does a decent job. I will try to finish as much as I can before my Hulu free trial ends but will be content if I only get through another episode or two. I'm curious whether the conflicts will play out how my research findings from college and intuition (aka stereotypes) say they will.

Thanks for reading my first post. God bless you all.