By Leah Bjornson,
Special to The Post

For young Muslims living in Canada, finding a partner can be more complicated than meeting someone at a bar or at a backyard barbeque. However, a new app launching next month may mean love is just a click — or a swipe — away.
Described as a place where Muslims “match and meet,” Salaam Swipe is an interactive matching application for Muslims. The app is similar to Tinder in that it lets you swipe left to ‘like’ someone or right to ‘dislike’ someone, but creator Khalil Jessa explained that it does not carry the same hookup connotation as its muse.
“The very fact that people are coming to this app to look for someone who shares a religious or cultural background already tells you that they’re looking for something deeper than just some sort of superficial connection,” he stated.
Born and raised in the Lower Mainland, Jessa graduated from McGill in 2011 with a double major in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science. Upon returning to White Rock, he began questioning the likelihood of meeting someone from his own community “serendipitously.”
“It’s really actually difficult  — especially for Muslims — to meet someone from your own background,” he explained.
Deciding there must be a better way to help modern Muslims connect, Jessa turned to the world of online dating and matchmaking applications for inspiration just over a year ago. After polling his friends who were also frustrated with the dating scene, he came up with the idea for Salaam Swipe.
As of 2011, Muslims only made up 1.8 per cent of the population of BC. This can make it difficult for young Muslims to find eligible partners within their own faith, let alone meet Muslims in their daily interactions with whom they can connect and have common interests.
This is made even more challenging by how young Muslims interact. “Our communities are gender-segregated. We are ethnically-segregated as well, and segregated along sectarian lines. Interaction between those communities is not as common as you would want it to be,” Jessa said.
Celebrating diversity and making connections across ethnic and sectarian divides is very important to Jessa, whose family comes from India and East Africa. “My extended family has people from all different backgrounds and sects.”
Religion-based dating sites are not uncommon (think JDate or Christian Mingle), but an experiment by the Muslim lifestyle website Aquila Style found that many of the most popular Muslim dating sites can be problematic. Through signing up three fictional women on four Muslim matchmaking sites, the site found that most men signed up were older than 35, and many were separated, divorced or looking for second, third or fourth wives.
Women were also encouraged to discuss their childrearing and housework activities and to disclose their “hijab status,” whereas men were not asked about their attire.
Considering this, Jessa’s app allows users to filter based on education, age, religiosity, and sect, but does not require that one do so. “You can play with those settings to find what you’re looking for,” he commented.
Salaam Swipe is not the first service targeting millennial Muslims, either. Other swiping apps like Crescent and Mindr, or dating sites like Ishqr, advertise themselves as platforms where young and multi-faceted Muslims can find their perfect matches.
In the Muslim community, young people are often introduced to one another by friends or family. In these more formal interactions, Jessa described how families might present a brief description and a picture of someone they are trying to introduce; if both parties are interested, then the families or friends may connect them. “It’s the same thing with this,” he said. “I’ve given people a picture and a description [. . .] and they can pick based off of that.”
In this way, this self matchmaking app still aligns with Islamic teachings, according to Jessa. “All I’ve done is cut out your auntie. I’ve cut out the middle-man.”
When asked what kind of reaction these apps have elicited from older Muslims, Jessa replied, “I think people are realising, parents are realising, that the way that we’re doing things just isn’t working. And that they’re waiting for solutions to come along to help young people to find someone.”
The true test will come this August, when Jessa and his team will launch Salaam Swipe on the app store. For more information on the app and Salaam Swipe’s exclusive launch party next month, follow them on Facebook.