From apps to matchmaking: the diverse ways some American Muslims navigate finding marriage partners

Nura Maznavi got a kick out of learning that New York City Muslim mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdanimet his wife on Hinge.

“It made me feel like less of a loser,” Maznavi said laughingly about meeting her own husband online more than 14 years ago, before apps like Hinge became a dating fixture for many people.

“He’s so cool," she said of Mamdani. "Him and his wife are just so New York chic.”

Mamdani’s success on Hinge, as well as the show “Muslim Matchmaker” on Hulu, provide a glimpse into some of the ways American Muslims meet their spouses, from the traditional to the contemporary. Many navigate the quest for love and marriage while balancing their beliefs, levels of devoutness, diverse lifestyles and a range of cultural influences.

“We just wanted a realistic assessment of what’s going on in the love space for Muslim Americans and that we do have unique challenges, but we also have very universal challenges,” said Yasmin Elhady, one of two matchmakers on the reality series on Hulu. “We show up in ways that are complicated and joyful and dynamic.”

Maznavi, a self-described “sucker for romance,” co-edited two collections by American Muslims on love and relationships. She found that people met "through family, through friends, through sort of serendipitous meetings, through college, through work.”

Back when she was the one looking, Maznavi, a lawyer, writer and daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants, met people through her parents, friends and extended family.

Then living in San Francisco, she found the pool of Muslims small. Her mom heard a Match.com radio ad and suggested she try it.

“I still resisted,” Maznavi said. Eventually, she relented — and met her husband there.

For Muslims seeking Muslims, “most of us are pretty few and far between and quite spread out,” said Hoda Abrahim, the show's other matchmaker. ”You’re not gonna go to the gym and just be surrounded by people that you could potentially marry.”

That may mean having to try a long-distance relationship, she said. Many of her clients already used Muslim-specific and other dating apps, she said.

There're also some in-person events for Muslim singles seeking marriage.

In the show, the matchmakers outline their “Rules of Three” — three meetings within three months and 300 compatibility questions to go through together. Their matched clients experience those first-meeting jitters, the warmth of a connection or the pain of rejection, and the uncertainty in between.

In assessing a couple's compatibility, the matchmakers consider what they call the “halal-haram ratio,” referring to the level of religious observance and how a couple's lifestyles would align.

One participant says she tries to perform the required daily prayers, but doesn’t “particularly dress very modestly.” She wants someone who’s open to the possibility of her faith growing and “who goes out" and "enjoys themselves, but … still follows the tenets of Islam — and trying to find a healthy balance of what that means.” (She’s also into good banter and concerts. Hairy men? Not so much).

Another participant says he wants a partner with “Islamic qualities” and has no strong preference on whether or not she wears the hijab.

“Many Muslims, even if they’re not a practicing, adherent Muslim, will have certain things that they’re very intense about: It could be the Ramadan practice. … It could be that they stay away from pork. It could be the clothing,” Elhady said. “There’s a really serious lifestyle choice that is associated with Islam and I think that in marriage, you are looking for someone to complement your style.”

According to a Pew Research Center 2023-2024 study, 60% of U.S. Muslim adults said religion was “very important” in their lives. That's close to the 55% of U.S. Christians who said the same in the survey.

Abrahim said some online disliked the “halal-haram ratio” term, seeing it as normalizing “haram” behavior, meaning behavior that’s not religiously permitted. She pushes back. “We’re not normalizing it. We’re just saying obviously people practice to a certain level."

Then there’s the debate over what to call getting to know the other person: Is it dating? Courting?

“This is something we discussed a lot,” Abrahim said. “If I say ‘dating,’ I mean courting and we actually specified that on the show, like, we’re intentional and we’re serious.”

Elhady said there were so many positive responses to the show, but noted that some Muslims didn't like the word “dating.” To that, she says: Make your own definition, or call it what you’d like. (Some use the term “halal dating.”)

“In their mind, dating is a word that was made for non-Muslims by non-Muslims and it means that there’s a physical relationship prior to commitment,” she said. “The show is not depicting people in premarital sex. … It’s depicting people searching for love.”

Among the questions that Kaiser Aslam gets asked by some of the students he serves as Muslim chaplain at the Center for Islamic Life at Rutgers University are: How to know if someone is compatible? And how to know them without getting intimate?

“In the Islamic tradition getting intimate, and sexually intimate is not allowed before marriage,” he said.

He suggests having serious conversations with accountability measures in place, like chaperones, meeting in relatively public places and clearly setting intentions “that you’re not trying to actually initiate intimacy or intimate contact, but you’re actually just trying to understand each other.” And, also, talking to the person's friends and family, he said.

Muslim Americans are vastly diverse — racially and ethnically.

“Young Muslims are finding people of different cultures over and over again, which is beautiful and great to see,” Aslam said.

For some, cultural differences can fuel “arguments of like, ‘No, we do marriage this way. No, in our tradition, the guy side pays for this. The girl side pays for this,’” said Aslam, who’s performed many marriages and provides premarital counseling.

Some parents object to their children marrying outside their culture, he said.

At times, there can be “racist underpinnings,” he said, adding: “We have to call it out for what it is. It’s not religious in any way, shape or form.” Theologically, he said, "we’re encouraged to make sure that the most diverse, good traditions have the ability of interacting with each other.”

Other times, he said, parents fear their children may be running away from their culture and need reassurance.

Tahirah Nailah Dean, who’s Black and Latina, said she’d encountered such barriers in her search, knowing that some potential matches were seeking to marry within their own culture and ethnicity. Some of her concerns also echo broader questions and debates beyond Muslim communities over racial preference and racial bias in dating.

Dean, an attorney who also writes about Muslim love and marriage, got married at 30 and later divorced.

In her 20s, she navigated the apps, but found dealing with such things as “ ghosting ” and “love bombing” emotionally draining. She tried matchmaking through the mosque and the “matchmaking aunties” as well as getting to know people through activities like volunteering at the mosque. She’d also asked friends to set her up.

Recently, she’s returned to the search.

Muslim or not, Elhady of the “Muslim Matchmaker” show argued, “people want to really fall in love — and it is hard to do in the modern age.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Hoda Abrahim, founder and CEO of Love, Inshallah, a matchmaker featured on the series "Muslim Matchmaker," on Hulu, works on her computer at her home on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, in Conroe, Texas. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Yasmin Elhady, a matchmaker featured on the series "Muslim Matchmaker" on Hulu, poses in Falls Church, Va., on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Yasmin Elhady, a matchmaker featured on the series "Muslim Matchmaker" on Hulu, poses in Falls Church, Va., on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Hoda Abrahim, founder and CEO of Love, Inshallah, a matchmaker featured on the series "Muslim Matchmaker," on Hulu, appears in her home on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, in Conroe, Texas. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Yasmin Elhady, a matchmaker featured on the series "Muslim Matchmaker" on Hulu, poses in Falls Church, Va, on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Yasmin Elhady poses in Falls Church, Va, on Aug. 12, 2025, left, and Hoda Abrahim appears at her home on Aug. 11, 2025, in Conroe, Texas. Elhady and Abrahim are matchmakers featured on the series "Muslim Matchmaker" on Hulu. (AP Photo)

Hoda Abrahim, founder and CEO of Love, Inshallah, a matchmaker featured on the series "Muslim Matchmaker," on Hulu, works on her computer at her home on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, in Conroe, Texas. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

FILE - Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani appears on stage with his wife, Rama Duwaji, right, at his primary election party, Wednesday, June 25, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa, File)

BEIJING (AP) — In China, the names of things are often either ornately poetic or jarringly direct. A new, wildly popular app among young Chinese people is definitively the latter.

It's called, simply, “Are You Dead?"

In a vast country whose young people are increasingly on the move, the new, one-button app — which has taken the country by digital storm this month — is essentially exactly what it says it is. People who live alone in far-off cities and may be at risk — or just perceived as such by friends or relatives — can push an outsized green circle on their phone screens and send proof of life over the network to a friend or loved one. The cost: 8 yuan (about $1.10).

It's simple and straightforward — essentially a 21st-century Chinese digital version of those American pendants with an alert button on them for senior citizens that gave birth to the famed TV commercial: “I've fallen, and I can't get up!”

Developed by three young people in their 20s, “Are You Dead?” became the most downloaded paid app on the Apple App Store in China last week, according to local media reports. It is also becoming a top download in places as diverse as Singapore and the Netherlands, Britain and India and the United States — in line with the developers' attitude that loneliness and safety aren't just Chinese issues.

“Every country has young people who move to big cities to chase their dreams,” Ian Lü, 29, one of the app's developers, said Thursday.

Lü, who worked and lived alone in the southern city of Shenzhen for five years, experienced such loneliness himself. He said the need for a frictionless check-in is especially strong among introverts. “It's unrealistic,” he said, “to message people every day just to tell them you're still alive.”

Against the backdrop of modern and increasingly frenetic Chinese life, the market for the app is understandable.

Traditionally, Chinese families have tended to live together or at least in close proximity across generations — something embedded deep in the nation's culture until recent years. That has changed in the last few decades with urbanization and rapid economic growth that have sent many Chinese to join what is effectively a diaspora within their own nation — and taken hundreds of millions far from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Today, the country has more than 100 million households with only one person, according to an annual report from the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2024.

Consider Chen Xingyu, 32, who has lived on her own for years in Kunming, the capital of southern China’s Yunnan province. “It is new and funny. The name ’Are You Dead?' is very interesting,” Chen said.

Chen, a “lying flat” practitioner who has rejected the grueling, fast-paced career of many in her age group, would try the app but worries about data security. “Assuming many who want to try are women users, if information of such detail about users gets leaked, that’d be terrible,” she said.

Yuan Sangsang, a Shanghai designer, has been living on her own for a decade and describes herself as a “single cow and horse.” She's not hoping the app will save her life — only help her relatives in the event that she does, in fact, expire alone.

"I just don’t want to die with no dignity, like the body gets rotten and smelly before it is found," said Yuan, 38. “That would be unfair for the ones who have to deal with it.”

While such an app might at first seem best suited to elderly people — regardless of their smartphone literacy — all reports indicate that “Are You Dead?” is being snapped up by younger people as the wry equivalent of a social media check-in.

“Some netizens say that the 'Are you dead?' greeting feels like a carefree joke between close friends — both heartfelt and gives a sense of unguarded ease,” the business website Yicai, the Chinese Business Network, said in a commentary. ""It likely explains why so many young people unanimously like this app."

The commentary, by writer He Tao, went further in analyzing the cultural landscape. He wrote that the app's immediate success “serves as a darkly humorous social metaphor, reminding us to pay attention to the living conditions and inner world of contemporary young people. Those who downloaded it clearly need more than just a functional security measure; they crave a signal of being seen and understood.”

Death is a taboo subject in Chinese culture, and the word itself is shunned to the point where many buildings in China have no fourth floor because the word for “four” and the word for “death” sound the same — “si.” Lü acknowledged that the app's name sparked public pressure.

“Death is an issue every one of us has to face,” he said. “Only when you truly understand death do you start thinking about how long you can exist in this world, and how you want to realize the value of your life.”

A few days ago, though, the developers said on their official account on China’s Weibo social platform that they’d pivot to a new name. Their choice: the more cryptic “Demumu,” which they said they hoped could "serve more solo dwellers globally.”

Then, a twist: Late Wednesday, the app team posted on its Weibo account that workshopping the name Demumu didn’t turn out “as well as expected.” The app team is offering a reward for whoever offers a new name that will be picked this weekend. Lü said more than 10,000 people have weighed in.

The reward for the new moniker: $96 — or, in China, 666 yuan.

Fu Ting reported from Washington. AP researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed.

The app Are You Dead? is seen on a smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A woman looks at her smartphone in a cafe in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A woman looks at her smartphone outside a restaurant in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A man looks down near his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

A man reacts while holding his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)