Shadee Elmasry – InPairs Matrimonial – NBF 391
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of finding a doctor and finding a healthy marriage, avoiding embarrassment, and finding a partner for a strong social network and marriage. Engagement is seen as valuable in various cultural cultures, but it is not recommended in Islam. There is a waitlist for parents to help prepare life, and lessons for parents to help grow and prepare for life recommended. Engagement is seen as valuable in various cultural cultures, but it is not recommended in Islam.
AI: Summary ©
Welcome everybody to a special live stream, Safina
Society live stream.
You're welcome.
This is the Nothing But Facts live stream
in the third story of the La Cocina
Soup Kitchen in the great state of New
Jersey, right down the street from a famous
and well-known Bob Wood Medical Center at
Rutgers University.
It's getting nippy out.
It's sunny, but it is nippy out here
in central Jersey.
And we are, alhamdulillah, brought to you by
GRT, Global Relief Trust.
You can always support them.
They're now working hard to send doctors to
Palestine, to Gaza.
They're working with that.
We hope to be having one of these
physicians on as a guest to give us
the news of what they're suffering.
But right now, we have a new organization
that actually has been, maybe it's new to
me, but it's been in business for two
years, right?
Just about two years.
It's called Impairs Masjid, and it is a
matrimonial, a virtual matrimonial company all you brothers
can get involved in, right?
You get a free application with this brother
right here.
Are you all married?
Only one is married?
How are you here, right?
So we have the founder here today, and
let's welcome our founder.
Welcome to the Safin Insight and Nothing But
Facts live.
So I'm super excited to be here.
It's something that we've been looking forward to
for a while.
So inshallah, this is our first episode as
well, trying to fill some content with our
mashayikh.
Wonderful.
So some people are already asking, why are
we so late to start today?
Because we have to set up two cameras.
They have their own camera, and all this
setup takes a while.
So that's why we ended up being a
little bit off schedule today.
But let's get straight to the subject.
Tell us about your organization.
What made you start this?
And that's the first question I wanted.
What made you start it?
And really, what's the goal?
Yeah, so I think about two years ago,
so I'm a medical student.
I just had a lot of friends reaching
out to me.
I had five friends in one week.
They reached out to me.
They're like, Zakaria, you know a lot of
people.
Do you know anybody for us for the
sake of marriage?
And I didn't know why they were reaching
out to me.
I'm not a matchmaker.
I'm not known as a matchmaker.
So at one point, I was like, you
know what?
This is a problem that all my friends
seem to be having.
Let me see if I can do anything
about it.
So I posted on
my Instagram story.
It said, if anybody's trying to get cuffed,
send me a DM.
Get cuffed.
That's bad, right?
Cuffed is in like, you know, cuff a
ring on your finger.
So if anybody's trying to find somebody, send
me a DM.
And I had 75 people send me a
DM just within my network.
And so I was doing an overnight shift
in the emergency department.
Were you a doctor?
I was in medical school.
You're in medical school.
I'm currently in medical school.
Okay, so the fast track of marriage.
Exactly.
That's not ceremonial.
Go to medical school.
You'll be married in four years, guaranteed.
That's the goal.
That's the goal.
All right.
So I'm there.
And I would go and like help sew
up a gunshot wound because I was doing
an overnight shift.
And then I would go and ask somebody
their height preferences and somebody like these are
like just very odd situation to be in.
Ajeeb, I never knew you're a physician.
This whole time, I thought you're like a
college student or something.
No, no, no.
So I'm not.
I have, I'm going back to school in
January, inshallah.
So to finish up my third year of
med school.
Nice, nice, nice.
And this is where exam?
Georgetown in DC.
So that's where you started?
Yeah.
This org.
Okay.
Started this org in Georgetown, which is a
beautiful area.
One of the prettiest areas in the whole
country is Georgetown.
That's K street between George Washington University and
Georgetown University.
That's one of the prettiest areas, especially in
the spring.
It's a beautiful area.
It's one of my favorite parts of the
country.
So you're working you're doing medical school there.
Georgetown medical school.
Yeah.
Okay.
I didn't even know they had a medical
school, but so you're there.
And is that where you originally from?
I'm from Michigan, Michigan.
And you're now moving to Dallas soon.
I just moved to Dallas cause my, my,
I just had my nikah done.
And so she's in Dallas.
So I'm there for the next few months
before I go back and finish school.
Wonderful.
Okay.
So you start this organization.
How does it develop from mere texts and
DMS to actually, you know, being an actual
organization?
So what is it now?
It's a website or what?
Yeah.
So it's a website.
So we played around with a lot of
different ideas.
Cause I realized there's like, if I'm having
75 people just in my network, send me
their bio datas.
There's a need for this.
There's clearly whatever is out there isn't servicing
our community appropriately.
So I made a Google form and then
just ask some, some questions about like what
people are looking for and some personal information.
And people that were not, that I did
not know were sending me really vulnerable information
about themselves.
We had 250 people sign up in less
than a week.
And I realized, all right, there's a lot
more here.
And so over the course of about six
months, we tried to find something that was
in line with our values as Muslims, but
also felt comfortable.
And, you know, keeping that air of, you
can be as honest as, as you should
be when trying to find somebody.
And that's when InPair started in December of
2022.
So I'm looking at your website here.
You know what?
I didn't realize it was in with an
N.
I thought it was an M.
Oh, no, no, no.
And the reason is that if we have
an N Sakina followed by a P, we're
going to give that a Iqlab right away.
That's going to become InPairs, right?
Noon second, followed by a P.
N Sakina.
All right.
All right.
So it's InPairs, everybody.
I-N-P-A-I-R-S dot
I-O.
And of course, their logo is the pear.
Two pears.
Exactly.
The fruit.
So I'm looking here.
It says 20, 21st century to Muslim matchmaking.
So you are, when you say Muslim matchmaking,
you don't specify anything beyond that.
Just that he's a Muslim.
Or she's a Muslim.
Exactly.
You're not specifying anything else.
I'm looking here at the website.
It's a very simple, easy, nice, good looking
website.
How does it work?
So it's pretty simple.
Let's say Mohammed is trying to get married.
So we'll use Mohammed as an example here.
So Mohammed today is what?
The 16th?
The 17th.
Today's the 17th of October.
Good.
So he filled out this pretty comprehensive intake
form on our website.
It takes about 15, 20 minutes to fill
out.
We ask all the important questions.
Some other services will ask questions like, do
you like pineapple on pizza?
That's really great to know.
You just can't do anything with that information.
It's not a conversation starter.
It's not really any tangible information.
So you don't ask those questions.
We don't ask anything like that.
So we ask questions like, what role does
Islam play in your life?
What are you passionate about?
What are your interests?
How often do you go to the masjid?
Things that actually you should be looking for
in Islam.
And then, so he's filled out this form
by the 17th.
On the 22nd of the month, we block
it off for the next few days.
We have actual matchmakers go through everybody's profiles,
rank them against each other.
And then on the 27th of the month,
we release the pair drop over the course
of three days.
The pair drop?
When?
On the 27th of every month.
Okay.
The 27th of every hijri month or lunar
month?
Because once you say 27th, I'm thinking of
Ramadan, right?
27th is 10 days.
Okay.
So the 27th of every Gregorian month.
Yes.
I said lunar.
I meant Gregorian month.
Yeah.
Okay, good.
So the 27th is the day that people
have to look forward to.
Exactly.
So you mimicked the medical school match, the
residency match, right?
Precisely.
So now people will be waiting on the
27th, just like college kids now.
I think they wait till April 1st.
All the colleges announce.
Isn't that the case?
All colleges announce if the kids made it
to school.
I don't know.
It's been a while for me.
All right.
I think it's something like that.
So that's really exciting.
On the 27th, you find out if anyone's
matched up with you.
That doesn't mean they're interested in you.
That means your matchmakers found you compatible.
Exactly.
All right.
So that's really good because oftentimes people say
they contact these matchmaking operations and they keep
calling, right?
Did I get anyone?
Did I get anyone?
But you're basically saying we'll go through everybody.
And on the 27th, we shoot a bunch
of emails.
Yeah.
And like you can sign in if you
have somebody and we have somebody for you.
You sign in and you'll see your results.
Exactly.
Only on the 27th.
That's good.
So that's the first wave.
So there's three waves per drop.
Okay.
So you sign on the 27th.
Muhammad let's say he sees Aya.
Yeah.
And so we present pictures and the rest
of the profile.
So he sees Aya's pictures.
He's physically attracted.
He looks at her profile.
He thinks that she's amazing on paper.
He says yes.
Unfortunately, Aya looks at his profile and says,
honestly, he's kind of ugly and says no.
Something that she's more than valid to say
no to.
Fair enough.
So they had 24 hours to make this
decision.
On the next day of the month, the
28th, the second wave is released.
Let's say Muhammad matches with Fatima and they
look at each other's profile.
They're both open to getting to know each
other and they both say yes.
So at that point, the contact information appears
on the screen and then they take it
from there.
But that means that the person has to
check on the 27th, go over and then
say yes or no within 24 hours.
Exactly.
And people do.
They follow up within 24 hours.
So we have 95% of people will
go through and review the match that they
have.
And they get a notification on their phone
or is it through?
They get texts.
They get emails.
So you shoot them on the 27th.
All my devices will be going off.
Yeah.
My email, my text, everything.
That's the goal.
That's the goal.
And then the person sees a file.
Does he have to reply and say, yes,
I'm interested or is there a button?
There's a button.
Say accept or reject.
So he doesn't.
That's it.
A check or an X.
Very simple.
Okay.
That's great.
So that information goes back to you.
Is that automated now that automatically on the
28th, it's going to get.
Yeah.
You're going to, the email will go back.
That's this person's interested in you.
Yeah.
Everything is on.
So that's actually really simple if you think
about it.
Right.
I mean, I don't have to sit around
waiting and feel disappointed and reload and reload
and reload.
Yeah.
That no one's interested in me.
I don't have all month to be swiping
away and doing all that.
I'll just wait until the 27th.
If anything comes, you know, there used to
be a company that you used to show
them the kind of clothes that you want,
that you regularly wear.
Some people that don't have any time for
shopping.
And then they'll just send you a bunch
of clothes that's within the range.
And they'll send you a bag.
If you don't like it, you just put
it back, put the sticker, throw it out
your door.
If you like it, then you pick up
your phone, open the app and pay for
it.
I feel like that's like the way that
it should be.
Like, I don't want to have to go
shopping and pick exactly.
So let's you have an idea.
Jeans are jeans.
So why do I need to go around?
They just send you a whole bunch of
jeans and then you just pick whatever you
want.
So now this is really what I'm really
impressed with.
I have to be honest, is the efficiency
of it and the idea that I don't
have to sit there waiting every single day
for some for some news.
It'll come to me on the 27th.
Exactly.
All right.
Now I have to ask you this.
Hey, are you here?
This is on for some reason.
It's getting cold back here.
All right.
Question for you.
Tell me about the number of people that
you have on the thing, because that'll give
people an idea of what are my chances.
So we have around 1800 people in the
system.
Well, that's great.
That is great.
People, listeners, you can join right now.
I know some of you in the comments
section.
I know that you live in America and
that you're single.
So a long time ago, but in our
experience in the last few generations, it hasn't
existed.
How do people get married?
If your mom and dad are very social
and very keen and they have it in
their mind, they can create an environment for
you by making a bunch of family friends.
We all sort of know each other, know
of each other.
And people always think of your kids when
they're thinking of marriage and it happens.
Right.
And you encourage it and you talk about
it.
A lot of families don't do any of
that.
They're like almost, we can say, oblivious to
their oblivious to this.
So, you know, actually, I actually would call
it almost a marriage crisis.
It is a crisis.
You have a ton of young people who
are trying to find somebody and you don't
really have any options.
I think the numbers, depending on what stat
you're looking at, it's between 40 and 60
percent of people of new relationships.
They're meeting online.
But what do we have as Muslims?
We have two major swipe based apps, which
really it's what they have is the volume
because it's really easy to access and pick
up.
But in the US and the UK is
really far ahead of us.
But in the US, we don't really have
a third option.
We have those two and nothing else.
So what is your who are your competition?
By the way, we have another crisis of
coldness if someone doesn't get the the air
conditioned remote here.
OK, so who's your competition?
Let's talk about that.
So we got Salaams and Muz.
Salaams.
Never heard of it.
Muzmatch.
Heard of it.
So they're basically the same thing.
And then you have Minder.
So that's Salaams.
It is Salaams.
Yeah, they're rebranded.
OK.
Yeah.
They don't want to get sued.
Oh, really?
OK.
So Muz got sued and Minder didn't want
to get sued.
Why did Muz get sued?
Because they were called Muzmatch and Matchgroup, which
owns Tinder, Hinge, a few of these.
Now Salaams.
They just bought Salaams.
So one of the biggest Muslim dating apps
in the space is now owned by the
same group that owns all of the other
dating apps.
So, I mean, I think that kind of
gives an indication of where the direction it's
headed.
Now, those apps are you look, you can
look at people all day and be swiping
right and left.
And if they happen to swipe and you
swipe in the same direction, then it would
send you a message.
Yeah.
You just get a notification on your phone
saying, hey, you matched.
You matched.
OK.
And then you take it from there.
Yeah.
But most people don't.
You have the issue of plethora of choice.
So you can have like you can have
like 15, 20 matches.
And all you've done is look at their
picture and see if you find them attractive.
A lot of these people don't have actual
profiles.
So it's literally strictly based off of your
physical attraction to them and not much else.
Here's a complaint that a lot of people
have is that the pictures aren't authentic.
Like the pictures are.
Hey, guys, can you see the air condition
thing in there?
No, I took it.
Maybe this window is open.
Is there a window here?
No, it's not the window.
It's the AC and the shade is not.
So tell me something.
A lot of people, they doctor their picture
too much.
It's like I get a little bit.
Right.
But sometimes you don't even know that that's
you.
I have seen faces of people online in
their profile picture that met them in person
and did not know they were the same
person.
Right.
There's I think, unfortunately, that's just the reality.
But I mean, like you said, like I
like you said this in another one of
your videos of take it off the digital
me in person.
You know, that's like where you budding relationships
can actually form is actually seeing somebody face
to face.
But I think the issue is, is that
with the current apps out there, people aren't
taking it off the digital.
You can, frankly, if I wanted to create
an app right now, as a now married
guy, I can download an app and then
get be speaking to somebody and then have
their number and text them privately within five
minutes of my decision to download the app
in the first place, download it, swipe, swipe,
swipe, find somebody, text them, boom, I can
text them.
And so that's an issue that a lot
of people are having on these apps, too,
as well as catfishes, which is like where
you use different pictures.
But also there's married people on these apps
who are saying that they're single.
I have a friend who was telling me
that they heard a story about there's a
couple that was recently divorced.
Yeah.
And both sides were now on the apps
again.
And both of them were saying that they
weren't married before.
Oh, like, yeah, you know, it'd be funny
if they matched.
So yeah, I actually I think overall, I
would describe it as as as a crisis,
just because there's nothing out there.
People are going to get married somehow.
We may as well provide solutions that are
halal and in line with our deen.
So salams and muzz are the same thing?
Essentially.
So why don't they just buy both?
Same company, that company?
The So what about these other ones that
Baba Ali has one, right?
What is that all about?
What is that called?
So that's a half your dean.
So what's that all about?
Okay.
So, so basically, for a little bit of
context is that we're now working specifically with
massage.
It is something we've been building up over
the last few months.
We have 50 massage that are on board,
including NBIC.
My wife is now going to be a
part of in pairs message to this new
product that we're going to be launching very
soon.
And something that I would pitch that I
was using when I was trying to close
all of the massage it in Jersey was
my experience on half your dean.
I think half your dean Baba Ali does
a really amazing job of doing in person
events.
I've heard that they're unparalleled with respect to
doing things in person.
He's very engaging.
He's very authentic, and people love him.
However, my experience with the online platform, what
was less than positive?
I think it's really just a volume thing.
They don't have enough people on there.
And they're so they have around 2000.
My guess is they have around 2000 users
globally.
So we like we're obviously we're not huge.
We only have around 1800 users, but they're
all based in the US and Canada, because
that's the only places that we operate.
Okay.
And of course, when you match, I see
here on your website that you have human
matchmakers here.
Yeah, it's not some kind of software that's
matchmaking everybody.
So something that we're doing is so it's
not a software.
Something that we are building, though, is a
matchmaker AI.
So AI is like a really fancy buzzword
that everybody likes to use.
But we essentially what we're doing is that
we're training a model based off of matchmaker
data and successful matches.
So these are matches where they've already both
said yes.
So the goal is is that when you
have like, you know, looking at scale 10
,000 20,000 users, it's a little impractical
to have, you know, 600 matchmakers.
Yeah.
So that's why if you if you if
you have almost like a multiple choice, or
answer with one word, then your algorithm or
your whatever AI can very easily sift through
100,000.
Exactly.
Right.
So if you have 20 questions, but the
questions aren't open ended answers, their questions are
like with certain keywords that are used, then
that's easy to do.
So the the AI portion is basically, there's
two parts to our our algorithm.
The first one is that we do filter
all of the basic stuff.
So like ethnicity preferences, high preferences, educational preferences,
things like that.
The matchmakers then look at all of the
qualitative information.
So the about you the role that is
now plays in your life, things like that.
So there's about six questions that you can
answer freely.
That's a big the the meat of where
the matchmakers are evaluating for compatibility is in
those answers.
So the matchmaker AI is also going to
be looking primarily at those answers to kind
of figure out how people mesh together.
Wonderful.
So let me ask you a question, because
you believe it or not, somebody asked me
to help out with a matrimonial event.
So I have no clue what to do
with such a thing.
Tell me what is a good matrimonial event
look like?
So I think that's a very difficult question
to answer.
Yeah.
I think half our dean or half your
dean comes close to what a really good
event looks like.
That being said, I think they're so difficult
to do.
And us personally, or me personally, have no
interest in doing anything in person because it's
very difficult to execute well.
But what does it entail?
Essentially, it depends on the group.
But the general idea is that you curate
a list of 50 men and 50 women
to come in probably on the same age
group, overlapping ethnicity preferences and overlapping, again, age
preferences.
And then you bring them into maybe like
the masjid ballroom or some kind of hall.
And then you have you run a few
events for them.
So what I've seen at an event that
I really liked really well with Sohba Institute
with Imam Mahed Hussain, they have round tables,
and they bring up particular topics, whatever it
may be like, kind of the dynamic between
man and wife in a household, favorite TV
shows, anything to get a conversation flowing.
With a small group of people.
Not one and one.
We're like three and three.
Exactly.
So this takes actually a lot of manpower
then.
It's not easy.
And space too.
But that's a great idea though.
So you have, let's say you have, you
split up your room into seven parts.
And then you go three and three guys,
three men, three women per table.
But how do you choose which three men
and which three women?
I think it's like pretty random, honestly, for
the most part.
You can try to screen through them.
But it's largely random.
And what you do is that you rotate
out the three.
So you're only going to sit with those
three women one time.
The guys could stay, the gender groups can
stay the same.
That doesn't matter.
And then they sift around.
So you can't just do an open-ended,
hey, as a matrimonial, everyone come in.
You actually really need to limit and focus
the age groups.
And then you need to know everyone's name
in advance and maybe give them a number.
So you say everyone, say like one, two,
and three, male and female go there.
Then one, two, and three will stay.
Then you only shift the other gender.
So you don't need to shift two genders.
You shift one gender only around.
So the thing is that if you don't
do this, like with the age stratification, even
during the signup point, what you'll have is
that this is a complaint I've heard at
a lot of in-person matrimonial events, is
that there's no screening in age.
And so what you'll have is you'll have
like a 50-year-old Ammu who has
like, you know, a family, maybe recently divorced.
Yeah, that's a waste of time for someone
who's in their 20s, let's say.
But the thing is, is that what you'll
have is that you'll have the Ammu chatting
like the 20-year-olds.
And so nobody's happy.
The Ammu is like upset that he's being
rejected by the 20-year-old.
The 20-year-old is upset that she's
having a 50-year-old trying to get
to know what she thinks is supposed to
be a conducive environment to finding a relationship.
So you have to limit the age to
what, 10 years?
Yeah, I think that's reasonable.
23, 25 to 35.
That's like, in my opinion, the perfect age
range.
Okay, 25 to 35.
Do you limit the numbers?
Yeah.
20, 30 people or what?
I think if you go like above 100
people total, it's just too difficult to manage.
It's a mess, yeah.
But if you don't have enough people, then
the chances to find somebody that you're compatible
with are low.
So 40?
Yeah.
45.
I would say actually more than that.
I would say like maybe 50 at the
lowest end.
When would you cancel an event?
At how many people would you cancel an
event?
49.
You would cancel the event?
Yeah.
There's 49 men and 49 women.
Oh, no, no, no.
49 total.
49 total.
Why would you cancel that at 49?
Because I think...
So let's say that's 25 and 25.
Let's say I have a pool of 10
people that I'm trying to matchmake with.
Okay.
There's five guys, five girls.
The likelihood that the nocib of either one
of these people or any of these people
within this group of 10 is very low.
It might happen, a low item, but it's
very low.
If I have a million people that I'm
working with, it's much higher.
So you need 30 and 30 minimum, you're
saying?
I think if you don't have that number,
then you're not...
Like the odds of having compatibility in that
group are on the lower end.
Cancel the event.
Yeah.
All together.
Okay.
That's really, really good.
I never thought about that.
All right.
So I love this idea of the little
conversation starter thing.
What are some of the things that they
discuss in these conversation starters?
In-person events.
Do you keep it completely neutral or do
you bring serious topics?
No, no.
They bring in some controversial ones.
So, all right.
There's questions that you need to know.
No, no, no.
I think more of like a housewife.
Do you expect the person that you're with
to be a housewife?
If you're a woman, is that some position
that you want to be in?
That's a complete...
You know how you have a football suicide
pass?
Yeah, like a guy's running across the field
and there's a safety behind him and a
linebacker in front of him and you throw
in the ball.
It's called the suicide pass because basically he's
going to get killed.
You throw it to him right in the
middle of the field.
It's called the suicide pass, basically.
That question, what do you think a wife
should do?
That is almost like a suicide question for
a guy.
He can never answer it right.
Never.
Right.
And like the way that I saw this
happen is that it was kind of like
a range of people.
So if you stood at one end of
the room, you're like very much like whatever
she wants to do, I'm happy with.
The other end of the room was if
you stand there, it's like my wife will
be a housewife.
That's a non-negotiable for me.
I actually figured it out.
I think the phrase is traditional but flexible,
right?
Because you give yourself so much room now,
right?
You keep your foundations right, but you have
room to move, right?
To maneuver and every situation is going to
be different in life.
Yeah.
All right.
Keep talking.
What are some of the other questions that
they say?
Let's see.
With respect to in-person events, like a
conversation starter, it can really be anything.
The goal is to spark conversation.
I mean, again, this is something that you
mentioned in some of your other podcasts.
You want to see like how people interact,
whether it's over a serious topic or a
light topic.
You're not going to be spending the entirety
of your life speaking about serious topics with
your spouse.
And so it doesn't make sense to when
you're first engaging with them, only speak about
serious topics.
Obviously, you should make sure that you are
discussing all of the important topics.
But you also have to make sure that
this is somebody that I can live with
at some point.
And if one person's very loosey-goosey and
then the other one's very, very strict, then
there's going to be some incompatibility there.
The serious topic is in a sense negative
because you're giving them only what, like 20
minutes?
And there's six people.
So everyone's going to talk for three, four
minutes.
And the serious topics, you may actually want
to need more time.
You need to pry into those serious topics.
So maybe something neither silly nor serious is
what you're looking for, right?
Something in the middle.
And how many minutes do you do this
thing for?
The ones that I've been to have been
about three hours.
The whole event is three hours.
And does it consist totally of these little
discussion groups?
No, no.
So there's a lot of variety.
And again, there's one of them that I
really thought that was executed well, was they
had these roundtable discussions.
They had these kind of like listing out
an opinion.
And then the people will stand at different
parts of the room to indicate like where
they stand on it.
And then they concluded with a project.
And basically you had like, I think it
was like 30 minutes to come up with
a business idea with like a set of
materials that you had in front of you.
And you had to sell it and pitch
it.
It was like a pitch competition at the
end.
And then there was a group of judges.
The judges had to decide which ideas were
the best.
And again, really, it's not about the pitch.
It's about...
It's just making them talk, making them think
and stuff, making them interact.
All right.
So that's actually really clever.
I never thought about that.
So I wonder in the grand scheme of
things, if you were to pitch that first
topic, was to be say something like, say
something funny about yourself.
And you'd have to tell them in advance
that this is going to be something.
Because humor, it really brings people together a
lot faster than serious issues.
Like for me and you to agree about
an issue is one thing.
But for me and another person to laugh
about something, there's a stronger, there's a quicker
bond right there.
So I wonder if at one table, you
had a serious topic.
Another table, you had a humorous topic.
I think the reactions would be totally different,
right?
I think the goal is to have every
person see both sides of a potential spouse.
And so what you'll have is that you'll
have an initial group of people and then
ask them the serious question.
And then you rotate, rotate, rotate.
And once you get back to that same
first group of people, the initial formation, then
you ask a lighthearted question.
Because then, or maybe even like the vice
versa, like to break the ice so that
everybody feels a little bit more comfortable being
honest and open with each other.
Because again, you can engage in much more
serious topics more candidly if you're kind of
on the same page with somebody about it.
You're already having a good vibe, so to
say.
So let's say you had 30 men and
30 women, then 10 locations throughout the hall
with 10 different subjects.
And that allows everybody to sit, to rotate
through.
I don't know if I'm getting my math
right with that.
Everyone gets to sit with every other person
at least for 10 minutes.
If you do 20 rotations.
That's 100 minutes.
That's almost two hours.
And each one will have a total different
subject.
Like one will be a subject, another be
maybe like, I don't know what, different subjects
that someone would have to be clever to
pick that are completely different.
That's almost two hours of an event.
What about food at these events?
Is that a waste of time?
Because food is for yourself.
You're not going to be, and you might
not want to be seen eating, right?
Well, I think, okay.
So the point is just some finger food
to start or what?
What do you do about food in a
matrimonial event?
Here's my take.
You're there to get to know somebody.
So the goal is to find somebody and
have a connection and you're forming connections in
groups, but maybe let's say if there's like
a break halfway through and you had a
really good connection with somebody earlier on, you
can spend like a five, 10 minute coffee
break to go and chat with somebody that
you were previously, you know, that you think
things might go well with get to get
to know a little bit more on the
side, as opposed to in this massive group
setting where everybody else is trying to get
to know.
Wait, so repeat.
So in the middle of an event, if
someone clicks with another person, they go off
to the side.
I, I think, I mean, not to the
side like that, like, you know, outside of
the mission, but like it was just like
somewhere like in the room, you're just having
a one-on-one conversation in the greater
room.
So everybody's there.
But you pull out of the event, you're
in their same room, but you're like, all
right, I'm skipping the next table.
I want to know this is like, like
at a coffee break or something.
Oh, so you have breaks.
Yeah.
And in those breaks, people get to go
and tell one of the matchmakers, I'm interested
in contestant number 25.
Yeah.
And they got name tags.
Yeah.
They have name tags in like ages, usually.
I see.
I see.
So those breaks are important.
Yeah, you can only speak.
I don't know.
Everybody's kind of nervous.
Like you're, you're still, you're, you're in a
vulnerable, vulnerable position where you're trying to get
to know somebody.
You're putting yourself out there.
You dress nice so that you can put
on a good representation of yourself.
So sometimes you just need those five minute
breaks to kind of recuperate.
Okay.
And let me ask you this.
So what's the most efficient way to transmit
that piece of information?
I would assume, for example, you get a
pen and you get a paper with everyone's,
the opposite gender's name, like mini golf.
Right.
You get a little pen, pencil and you
get the paper.
And then let's say you sit in the
first round table and a person is interested
in, let's say, I don't know, Fulan.
Yeah.
So you look at, you find his name
there and you circle it or you fill
in a bubble or something.
Then in the break or at the end
of the event or in the break, you
give it to the person.
I think that's one method of doing it.
You put your name at the top.
So I think there's some people that would
prefer to just go up and like let
the sister know or let the brother know
like, hey, I'm interested.
Would you like to get to know each
other?
There's some people that would like, that don't
feel comfortable being, you know, that upfront.
And so you can just go to the
facilitator and say, hey, you know, sister, Meriem,
I'm interested in her.
We'd love to get to know her.
But how could you be not, how could
you be uncomfortable?
The whole purpose of the whole operation, that
you're there, you walk through the door.
Everyone knows a matrimonial event is happening, right?
This is not in a private place.
You're in a mess.
We all saw you walking in, right?
So there is no shame in the whole
subject.
We have to have no shame in the
whole subject.
So when you get there, it makes no
sense to be ashamed, to be embarrassed to
say that I'm interested in so-and-so.
Like, what is the purpose that you're here?
I think it's just a lot easier to
get rejected when it's not to your face.
You know, if I go to, well, you're
not going to go to the person.
You're going to go to a matchmaker.
That's what I'm saying is that you can
like either go up to the person directly
or you can go to the matchmaker.
No, that's so weird.
That is so weird.
Go up to the person directly is too
weird.
That's what I'm saying.
Is that like the matchmaker?
Yeah, yeah.
No, you go to the mat.
That's like what you're there for, you know?
But I thought you meant they're embarrassed to
go up to the matchmaker.
No, no, no.
Okay, okay, okay.
So that makes sense.
So in this case, you need a staff
of people there.
Yeah.
You can't just have an event with two,
three hosts.
Usually have a few facilitators, maybe like four
or five.
Facilitators, they're called.
Okay, very good.
Really good.
But I think I have a few questions.
Yeah, go ahead.
I mean, I'm always interested in people and
their work, but go ahead.
What's your, what are your questions?
So I think, okay.
Obviously, what we're doing is that like I
have in pairs, you know, this matrimonial service.
You have Starboard, which is.
Starboard is our mentorship program.
Awesome.
Is that launching or has that been launched?
It's in a soft launch mode right now.
And some of our people want to launch
via matrimonial events.
Okay.
And I got and all this, I never
ever imagined myself to be involved in this.
And most recently our sheikh in Yemen, Habib
Omar.
When people told him our life is not
the same, people are having trouble getting married.
He's the one who suggested these, that these
kinds of events take place.
Okay.
He didn't specify, but he just said they
need to come and see each other.
Right.
So when I heard it from him, I
started to get a little bit more acceptance
of being involved in such a thing.
But commonsensically looking around, sometimes you see such
qualified brothers and the sad thing about it,
it's like a sports career.
Like the clock is ticking, right?
The clock is ticking.
Unlike other careers, you could be like not
great at business for years and then do
well.
You learn over time, like the founder of
McDonald's, he stunk until the age 50.
He didn't sell anything.
Really?
Yeah.
No way.
You don't know about this Ray Kroc?
He was just like selling like milkshake mixers.
Yeah.
And he was 52 years old when he
discovered McDonald's.
No way.
And he worked so hard to obtain it.
And he eventually, first he got the rights
to franchise it.
Then he eventually bought it out.
He came up with ideas to make it
work.
Oh, so he didn't even start it.
He didn't even start it.
He stole it.
He stole it.
He was a gangster, but he outsmarted them.
He outsmarted them, nabbed it, but he was
really dishonest in the final.
They were also very naive.
Yeah.
Right.
And they never saw a penny of McDonald's
after that.
No way.
They got their initial check and that was
it.
You know, I thought, I was going to
say, I feel like you said his name
is Ray what?
Ray Kroc.
I feel like a Ray Kroc owning McDonald's
is not what I was expecting.
Yeah.
I was expecting like Ray McDonald's.
The actual McDonald's family never eat from McDonald's
because of what he did to them.
That's valid.
But what he did is ultimately he realized
that you don't make money off the sandwiches,
the burgers, you make money off the rent.
So own the land.
So be a real estate company buying lands
on the corners of these major highways.
Then franchise it out and make the franchisor
rent from you.
Interesting.
And that's why eventually there was like a
hundred stores and they said to him, listen,
we want to change a menu item.
And he's like, nah.
And they're like, what do you mean?
Nah, we run the whole thing.
He's like, you think so?
I own all the lands, right?
I own all the lands.
So the McDonald's people said this or like
- He's their franchisor, right?
But he set up another company and forced
all the franchisees to rent from him.
So he's like, yeah, you might have a
hundred, but I own the land on 99
of them.
Yeah.
Right.
I own all the lands.
He got investors, of course, right?
And so he said, I'm actually in charge
here because I'll put you out of business
tomorrow.
Yeah.
So they had to sell.
And he gave them a check and they
said, well, what about our percentages?
You got to give it at least 2
% of everything, right?
He's like, yeah, the investors didn't want that.
Let's make a handshake agreement for that.
And they agreed.
Of course, they're not going to see anything.
Yeah.
They didn't see a penny after that.
No way.
Yeah.
But the point being is that in marriage,
it's a scary clock.
It's not like other things in life that
can marinate over time.
Wisdom can marinate over time.
Money can grow over time.
But marriage, if the clock is ticking on
you, right?
So is there a prime time to get
married?
Yeah, like right out of college.
Because that's when you know, still, you know
a lot of people.
You're still young.
And I have to say, you don't want
to be too smart when you get married.
You'll make it so complicated for yourself.
You want to be just like enough to
know character and the basics of life.
But if you're too advanced, and you know
human nature, and you're too smart for your
own good, you're never going to make the
decision.
If you realize how huge the decision is,
it also paralyzes you too.
So I think if your life is too
advanced, and her life is too advanced, it's
like a merger between two huge companies.
Yeah, basically.
Chances are, it's never going to happen, right?
When do you think that you've gotten to
the point where, like, okay, you're now out
of this window.
And if you're not just going to find
somebody organically, you're going to have to try
to start investing in something.
I would say three years out of college.
Like 24, 25?
If you're three years out of college, and
you hit age 25, and you have no
prospects over, yeah, then you need to get
in pairs or something else.
So just, you know, while we're talking about
in pairs, just for the plug, now that
I've mentioned a little bit to you about
how it works, what do you think about
in pairs as opposed to some of the
other services that you might have heard?
No, I'm really impressed.
Because you know that Omar has been talking
to me about this, and I'm like not
paying attention, right?
And I wanted to come into this totally
raw, which I did.
I didn't even know who you were, what
you were, or what your organization was about.
And I kept thinking that he's telling me
in pairs.
And I thought, yeah.
And I thought it's an organization for the
hearing impaired, right?
So they're not hearing impaired, they're impaired in
another facet of life, right?
So, but what you told me about the
simplicity of it, I became really impressed.
I didn't ask you one more question on
your process.
After the 28th, when the two have matched,
and they've agreed to each other, what do
you do?
You just shoot them email with both on
the CC?
So it's the screen will auto-populate with
each other's contact information, then they can take
it from there.
Then you just, you leave.
We've done our job.
Okay, good.
With InPairsMeschid product that we're coming out with.
So basically InPairsMeschid is that we're working with
local massage across the US.
Yeah.
And that we're building a wedding system.
So instead of having her number, it's her
wedding's number.
Yeah.
Okay, that's very good.
I'm a big believer in that.
I know it's very contentious subjects.
Do you approach a sister directly?
Sometimes they don't want you to go to
their dad, which is weird.
But yeah, sometimes they don't have that kind
of relationship with their family.
They want to screen first because the family
may be too difficult.
Or maybe they're, that's just how they are.
They don't have those traditional and I would
say Islamic backgrounds.
Not everyone does.
On this topic.
Okay, this is, you're right.
This is very contentious.
Yeah.
And I've seen both ends of the extreme.
So I've seen like brothers who they're talking
to their secret girlfriends for like three, four
years and then they'll bring it to the
wedding.
Yeah, I think that's really bad.
Absolutely.
That's definitely not the way that we should
be doing it.
But I've seen the other end and I
don't know if this is, if I can
say that this is the best way.
Of every single time they're getting to know
a sister from day one when they're first
meeting, they'll see like kind of like a
brief picture in a profile.
And if they're happy with that, they will
bring their entire family to meet her entire
family.
The issue is overkill too.
The issue is that the brother is also
very picky.
The one that I'm thinking about in particular.
So he'll go four or five times a
year to see different families.
And every time it ends up, you know,
without it working out.
So is there, what's the middle ground?
You're asking basically what is it, what should
be said to someone, the brother who's too
picky?
Both the brother who's too picky, but then
also when is the appropriate time to bring
in the wedding?
Is it day one?
Is it after a week of getting to
know each other?
Well, let's think about it as you raised
a girl for 19 years of her life,
20 years, right?
Now, as a practicing Muslim goes to the
message, you're close with your family.
And that's the foundation, the framework with Lagomit.
Now, if a guy goes and he's trying
to get to know your daughter at school
and stuff, and he's very serious and he
works and everything, don't you consider the noble
route to talk to you, right?
And say, I'm not proposing, I'm just would
like to get to know your family, right?
I'd like to know your daughter.
Or someone from his side says that to
you.
To me, that would be the commonsensical thing,
right?
Now, I understand at school, you're going to
interact with someone so much.
In work, you may interact with someone a
lot.
And they get to know each other.
But that's different to me in my eyes.
So he and her may know each other
well enough that he's already made up his
mind, that he wants to propose or get
to know her at least.
But to actually take those steps, to me,
it just doesn't sit right.
Like, why would you take those steps without
telling her family?
And we're talking about families.
And I get it, not everyone has a
family in the first place, or has this
kind of family.
I'll assume a lot of you guys know
what I'm talking about, right?
That the idea of you have an intact
family, that you wouldn't go and propose to,
let's say, a family friend's daughter and talk
to her on the side about this big
subject and bypass her family.
It doesn't sit right with us.
So at least tell us something.
I would expect a noble person to do
that.
I think the idea is like, I want
to figure out if this is even worth
pursuing.
Yeah.
Like, I don't really know much about this.
You're not proposing.
Just coming to get to know, that's it.
But do you think that, and this is
kind of like after, again, this is my
line of work, right?
Yeah.
So something that I'll hear often from men
is that there's a lot of, and from
women, is that there's a lot of familial
pressure once you bring somebody home of like,
now this is not like, I'm not bringing
somebody home to get to know.
Like, I'm bringing somebody home to, you know,
talk about marriage with.
Like, this is what is happening now.
We're following the marriage track.
You know, the Quran says, Like, don't do
something so huge right away.
It's a shock.
So one of the simple ways to do
it is, let's say you're interested in a
certain person.
Say, all right, we're not going to put
you at the table together.
That's too awkward and too, she may reject
you, whatever.
So you have some kind of gathering.
There are dinners all the time, people having
dinners, people just coming over for tea and
coffee, or there's an event at the masjid
and you can cross paths, right?
So that's like the first meeting, let's say.
You cross paths.
I remember one person, there were the men
were sitting in the basement and the daughters
and the women were upstairs and they kept
sending one of the sons, Oh, go give
this to your mom.
Go send this to your mom.
And then they would have one of the
girls, Oh, go pick it up.
It was like, I don't know, a plate
or a tray.
That was their actual way of making them
see each other and interact.
This is before the day of digital, right?
So did it work?
Yeah, it worked out.
They're married?
Yeah.
No way.
It worked out, yep.
And then he realized, my mom was, it
was a trick, right?
To get the two to cross paths, right?
How does one even coordinate this?
Like from the parent's perspective, are you like,
are you just a conversation you have beforehand?
Like we're trying to set our kids up.
Well, it's different scenarios.
Sometimes you have scenarios where kids are pretty
young and sheltered and the parents are very
involved, right?
And frankly, those are the easiest because they
listen to their parents, right?
And I know this, we're living in a
generation, a time that people don't do that.
And they wouldn't even fathom it.
But what I'm saying is that doesn't have
to be a direct meeting right away in
any circumstance because that could be too awkward.
But I would expect at some point, someone
let me know that you're talking to my
daughter.
And if my son would do that, I
would say the same thing.
Like at least tell us we could actually
help you make this legitimate and good, right?
Yeah.
So I think something that I'm curious to
know is that obviously I'm sure you've heard
a million and one stories on this, but
can you tell me about a time that
when there's a couple that they tried to
do things the right way and then maybe
it's not working out with respect to bringing
it to the family?
I've heard a lot more of the opposite.
Really?
A lot more people trying to do it
the wrong way.
And not only that, he just becomes accustomed
to it.
And he almost becomes, whatever the term for
it is, a guy who's able to get
girl's number, chat them up for a little
bit.
Yeah, like a type of version of that,
right?
Just he would, it's almost like he's flirting
with his sister for a while all under
the auspices or the intention of getting married,
but he actually never does anything.
Why?
Because there's too many options.
And he's not taking it seriously.
It's like easy come, easy go.
So, and those types, I don't think they
need matrimonial events or people.
They're not trying to do it the right
way.
They go around fishing and I see them
going fishing for the next 10 years, right?
I think that this is like an issue
that a lot of, I think an issue
that a lot of Muslim men have based
off what you're saying is commitment issues.
Do you think that kind of running through
the reps of talking to girls, getting the
numbers, not having it work out, that builds
up to long-term commitment issues?
Well, I can only tell you, I can't
make a principle out of it, but I
can only tell you what I've seen.
And from what I've seen, it's usually like
a trend.
And this person's always, constantly has some girl
that he's talking with and it just seems
to never work out, right?
And I think maybe, possibly, it's not treated
seriously enough, right?
So, okay, with respect to actually setting people
up then, do you think that there's value
in having somebody who is looking at this
objectively from a third party?
The thing is, I think that's fine too,
like something like this, a third party is
looking and saying that you two match up
and everything.
But the question then is, what does he
do when he receives the information?
All right, I've matched, I'm interested in this
profile and she's interested in my profile.
And I'm saying profile because you haven't even
met yet.
It's just your profiles match up.
So now you got two options.
There are guys who become very timid.
They're so slow.
They're so hesitant to act, which is like,
that's why you have family.
You have a dad, you have a mom,
right?
And if you have a family connection, you
should use it, right?
And maybe the mom will talk to the
other mom.
Now, I may be so off on this
because a new generation will just not do
that.
But then, well, what does the guy do
then?
He's now facing the fear that I can
approach and screw up the approach, right?
Yeah.
And that's why it's better to send in
a blocker.
A running back doesn't just run straight through
the defense.
He doesn't try to run in front of
the linebackers and the safeties.
Send a blocker.
Let him get hit all day, right?
So you send, it's like there is a
reason for that, right?
Hijab and Mastura.
I don't want to go face this scenario
by myself.
Most people won't.
Very few people will be okay with the
awkwardness, right?
Yeah.
Send in a blocker.
Send in someone to get the rejection for
me, right?
Or he clears the way and things are
better for me, right?
So again, I say it's contentious because I
don't know how people are thinking.
Some people are very totally disconnected from the
family and they're just doing things on their
own.
So I think with this perspective, having somebody
else kind of like facilitate, right?
Do you think that maybe if this is
what you've seen as best practice, how do
you feel then about the apps where you're
having a direct line to the other person?
There's no filtered process, no adulteration on it.
It forces eventually one of the parties to
come up with a way of talking that
is a clear suggestion but also not forcing
the opposite side, mostly the woman, to have
to reject the person.
Hmm.
So they have to come up with the
right language to talk.
That's right.
And all right, let's take a hypothetical.
Two people, they have no families.
Okay.
Maybe they weren't raised like that.
Maybe their families aren't involved because there is
a lot of that, right?
So the guy should be, I think he's
usually viewed as the one who is proposing,
right?
And he's got to learn the language of
expressing what is the next stage?
Yeah.
Are we just going to get to know
each other?
How long is this going to go on
for?
How are we going to get to know
each other?
Are we just going to text back and
forth?
Are we going to meet?
Where are we going to meet?
How are we going to meet?
Are we going to meet alone with people?
So he needs a little playbook to figure
out what's the next step because he's all
on his own.
Yeah.
And it's totally fathomable in cities where there's
employment but not families.
New Jersey is an area where his family's
been here for ages, right?
But I could tell you probably places in
middle of America, maybe Seattle, people get hospital
jobs and he's alone, she's alone.
They're all on their own.
So they also need a route.
We can't pretend that those people don't exist.
So then he has to come up with
that middle language where it's clear what he
wants to do but it's not a direct
question that she might feel bad rejecting him
and therefore drag him on or give him
a mixed message.
That's what I'm worried about, like mixed messages
in this where neither side know what the
actual truth is.
And that's where I'm saying what family does
is it helps eliminate those mixed messages without
you having to directly reject somebody or propose
yourself, throw yourself onto somebody.
Yeah, having that like third party helps to
grease the wheels of getting you from point
A to point B ideally being marriage or
knowing whether or not you will be.
Exactly.
There's just a big difference between a person
saying, I want to marry you.
And then let's say that person's friend or
representative or aunt or mom or dad going
to their side and saying, yeah, he's ready
and he's good to go.
There's a big difference in that.
So question for you then is obviously we're
launching in Prism Asyut and the goal is
to help facilitate through massage.
Do you think that there is a role
to play now that Masajid in the U
.S. have shifted from being just Muslims to
Islamic centers?
Yeah.
Right.
Where they do a lot more than just
lead the five daily prayers.
Do you think that there's a role for
Masajid to play in matchmaking?
To be honest with you, I think matchmaking
begins with the parents of middle schoolers.
Okay.
That's really where it starts.
Walk me through that.
Like they need to know, they need to
firstly talk to their kids about and they
need to think for themselves what is needed
for this person to be a viable candidate.
So let's say for a guy, first, he
needs to not be known as somebody who's
always with hanging out with girls.
He needs to not be known as someone
who's always in the feeds commenting on other
girls' Instagram posts.
Right.
He needs to make sure that is not
his reputation.
Yeah.
He needs to now have a serious career
mind path and be mindful of that aspect
of things.
He cannot be a sort of a drifter
who's daydreaming and has nice political ideas, nice
philosophical ideas, but no actual skill.
The faster he earns a skill, the faster
everything moves in his life.
So he's got to pick an industry where
he's employable and then he needs to start
being social.
How do you be social?
With whom to be social?
So if a guy is social with many,
many other men, his reputation develops.
We know him as a good young man,
right?
Those other guys have sisters.
They got cousins.
They have daughters.
They have women that they know.
Yeah, they're connected to the community.
So community connection is really important.
So the guy's personal and religious reputation and
his competence.
So in Hadith, who do we accept from?
Right.
So Adalah is your reputation amongst in the
community, in your deen, in your morals.
Number two is your competence.
As a husband, you need competence.
The competence is going to be your social
skills.
Do you know how to talk?
People have been around you.
They know you're not weird.
And you're competent in being able to earn.
So you can set somebody up.
When it comes time for him to marry,
it's not so difficult.
So that's why I would go to the
parents of middle schoolers.
So let's say we're now past that point.
Like there's a young man, early 20s.
He's trying to lock himself down and find
somebody.
But he feels like he's not quite there.
What are things that he can be working
on to develop himself for the sake of
marriage?
Well, it's still those three things.
What's your social network look like?
You got people to vouch for you.
You have people who would suggest you for
marriage in the first place.
Your reputation amongst them.
And your competence in earning.
Like these are the three main things, right?
So with respect to earning, I think a
topic that's very widely discussed.
A topic that's very widely discussed is mahr.
And so on the topic of mahr, something
that I found as an Egyptian, going to
try to meet a Palestinian family.
Total different worlds, by the way.
Yeah, they have different rules.
They have different expectations.
Very different.
All Shwem and Egyptians have different ways of
getting married.
Yeah, so how does...
Let's say a brother goes and he proposes
to a sister and his goal is...
He has his expectations of what a mahr
looks like.
But then the family has very different expectations.
What's the best way to try to navigate
that?
There was one time the dads tried to
do it and they had a big fight.
Egyptian-Palestinian, right?
Big blow up.
Because again, the Palestinian, the Shami tradition, obviously
not speaking for everybody, but saying in general,
the general Shami tradition is it's all on
the husband.
The whole thing, the whole shebang.
We're not lifting a finger.
But the Egyptian side does have a little
bit of a give and take where certain
parties will be held by you, certain by
us, and then certain things will be split
like that.
So those discussions best to be done by
your lawyers, counsel, right?
You don't go in and have big negotiations
yourself.
You send your counsel to go and talk.
So who would the counsel be in this
situation?
So let's say your dad and her dad,
right?
Let them have a discussion on it.
Why?
Because that's the first go around.
If we're so far off, you don't want
to be so far off with her dad,
right?
And usually most cases a woman doesn't negotiate
her mahr.
She may talk to tell her, but she
doesn't directly negotiate her mahr, right?
She'll tell her dad what she wants.
But that's usually how it works.
You have them discuss it so that if
you're so far off, it's not you who's
far off.
And you could come in afterwards and say,
okay, sorry, my dad was way off.
Let's work this out and be the good
guy.
There's a reason why they send in two
interrogators.
They send a good cop and a bad
cop.
It's always better to have two people involved
so that one could do the stuff that
could potentially be damaging to you.
The dad can do that.
He can bear that.
Like I said earlier, he's the blocker, right?
For these potentially contentious discussions.
What about, okay, I heard there's two stories
that really kind of like left me, especially
having recently been a part of these conversations
or had these conversations.
There's two stories that I heard, one of
them in Jersey, one of them in SoCal
that really kind of blew me away.
The first one in Jersey is that there's
a brother who, you know, him and him,
like he met her family.
Everything was going well.
They've been speaking for a few months.
Everything was well and dandy.
Then they started talking about mahr and the
father didn't like the son or didn't like
the potential groom.
So he said, you know what?
150K mahr.
And so the brother was like, I'm in
love with this woman.
And she's in love with him?
Yeah.
Well, that's the problem right there.
You're in love first and then you get
your parents involved.
Why even waste your parents' time?
No, no, they did everything.
Just get married and khalas.
They did everything the halal way at that
point.
Like he went through the wadi in the
beginning.
And he accepted him.
And he let him have the second meeting.
He let him have the second meeting.
Then that wadi is a confused person.
Why would you let him have the second
meeting, right?
I don't know.
I think they were also trying to get
to know him at the same time.
Or is it that he passed the first
meeting?
He was good.
He was good.
And then by the time the wadi figured
out that he's actually not good, they're already
in love with each other.
I think that's what happened.
Yeah, that's an awkward situation.
Yeah.
So what ended up happening in this situation
is that the brother kept going.
He was like, 150K mahr.
And so he came up with the 150K
over three years.
Which is what?
Like 30K, right?
Way less than that.
Way less than that.
Divided by 15.
So he ended up raising over the course
of three years he worked and then got
the 150K for the mahr.
Obviously, this isn't the ideal.
So how do you...
That's a great guy.
I hope they're very happy because he earned
it.
And the wadi, he didn't say, okay, no,
I was just exaggerating.
He wanted to keep the daughter happy.
She needs 150K on the spot to be
happy.
No, no, he wanted to...
Marry another woman.
He set this crazy bar.
Yeah.
And then expected and was like, there's no
way that this guy is going to hit
this bar.
He's going to leave.
Like I'm pricing him out of my daughter.
Yeah.
And then what ended up happening is that
he comes back a few years later.
He's like, hey, I got the 150K you
asked for.
And the daughter obviously didn't want this.
But what's the father going to say at
that point?
Well, I personally find this wadi to be
off in the way he handled the whole
thing.
So that's not the way to do things.
So let's say the brother came to in
this position.
He's like, they're asking for 150K.
Yeah.
What do you tell him?
I tell him, I ask him, what is
the dad's profession?
Is he a real estate developer in Manhattan?
Because that's a very low mahr if that's
the case, right?
Let's say he's upper middle class.
Upper middle class.
Then someone needs to talk to that guy.
He's either telling you, leave.
It's giving you a hint to leave.
Or we can talk to him and wake
him up a little bit.
So that's why, again, why would you do
something so difficult alone?
You can utilize, leverage the people that you
know, your imams, your friends, to situations like
this where we'd say, talk to the guy
and get him back onto earth.
Okay.
With this mahr.
So there is the opportunity for outside kind
of intervention when you're talking about mahr.
Of course, it's a negotiation like anything else.
This other story, I'm a big fan of
this story.
Yeah.
It was a, there was a brother, again,
very interested in the sister, did everything the
halal way.
She was the one who set the bar
for the mahr.
And that's makruh, by the way.
Is it?
Like for the Prophet, he said, the best
woman is one who is easygoing with the
mahr.
Okay.
Right.
Like, it's like a bad taste almost.
I think she left a very bad taste.
She asked for a hundred K.
The dad, if the dad does that, it's
acceptable.
Right.
If the dad says, no, this is my
daughter.
You have to pay a lot of mahr,
a high mahr.
That's acceptable.
It's reasonable.
It's understandable.
But okay.
Anyway.
So she said, I want a hundred K.
Okay.
She also said, I want to go to
medical school.
Oh, wait, on his tab?
On his tab.
Okay.
And I don't want to work after I
graduate from medical school.
Well, what is the point of going to
medical school then?
This is just to have the letters.
This is a, that's a really, really weird
request.
But they loved each other.
They were very happy with each other.
She obviously loves something else about him, right?
What's his job?
What was his job?
Not enough to afford this.
I think he was like a consultant or
something.
I think she loves herself.
I want you to guess how this worked
out.
These are probably your friends who are cursing
me right now in Georgetown.
These are people I was very shocked to
hear these stories.
Either way, they didn't work out, but...
No kidding.
Yeah.
Right.
Who is going to work out with such
a ridiculous request?
I'm going to disappear for four years, drain
half a million from your accounts and then
not use it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think, you know, Jersey is different with
the stories that you hear coming out of...
That's Jersey?
That's...
Yeah.
I've heard a lot of really interesting things
about Mahdi here.
It's a very good method of education on
this subject.
Just go by stories, right?
To develop a norm here.
All right.
What else you got?
So what do you think I suppose to
develop a norm?
What do you think a fair asking amount
is?
Firstly, where is this girl?
She has advisors in her family.
Like, where is her dad and mom to
say, this is like, you're way off on
this.
I think they're, again, in the position of
like, they want to keep the daughter happy.
You're asking for this much, even if you're
going to be single for the rest of
your life.
If that's what you want to ask for,
ask for it.
And then there's like, you know, parents who
are actually being parents and saying, maybe this
is a little out of the realm of
reality.
Some people spoil their kids.
Like, you have to wake up a little
bit and be within a realm of reality.
Now, by the way, that's why I said,
what is their job?
Because if they're all multi-millionaires, 150K is
a drop in the bucket.
It's expected.
If a millionaire family is proposing to another
millionaire family, that's nothing for them.
So that's, it's Orfi.
That's why I'm saying it's Orfi.
But if you're saying like a regular person,
that you said upper middle class, then that
will be out of range.
Then the range would be 10 to 50.
So in this situation, he was, he was
upper middle class.
She was from a wealthy family.
So in this position, like, what would you,
is this even, is this like a fair
ask from her end to ask for this?
You have to meet in the middle because
you're not living your way.
You're not living his way.
Maybe you meet in the middle.
You have to meet in the middle somewhere.
That's the thing.
Some people, they care more about money than,
than love.
That's the truth.
There are people out there, and I could
tell you from what other women have told
me.
I'm not judging the women.
I can't judge the women.
I don't know them, but they have told
me there are women.
All they care about is the material aspect
of life.
This thing is going to, this life is
going to be comfortable from here on.
I will not worry about another penny.
And I will have everything that I want.
And if he's here, he's not, it doesn't
make a difference.
The personal element is not, think of it
what you want.
But some people are like that.
Yeah.
Okay.
Fully off track.
But this is just something that, again, we
spoke about this previously.
But something that I'm really curious about is
your take on physical attraction when you're looking
at somebody for the sake of marriage.
What is your opinion on that?
I think number one, it's extremely important for
people to take care of themselves.
And number two, if two people's hearts come
together, provided that both sides are not repelled
from one another.
That's the key.
So that is actually a lower bar than
many people may put.
You ask yourself the question, are you repelled
from this person?
And the answer is no, then you can
proceed.
Doesn't mean you're going to marry them, but
you can proceed.
Because you can come to love everything about
them if you love the person.
So that's the advice that I heard from
Mashaikh when I was young.
That's the question you ask yourself.
Is their deen good?
For the man, is his character good?
And then for both of them, is your
deen good?
And for both of them, are you repelled
by them?
Yes or no?
And if the answer is no, then you
can continue talking.
But if you are repelled, then no, then
you don't marry them.
I really like that way of approaching it
of you take out how attracted am I
to this person?
It's am I attracted to this person?
Yes or no?
Maybe not am I repelled to this person?
Do I find them offensive to look at?
Well, the reason I think they said that
is that you can't really tell if somebody
is...
You don't know if you're attracted to them
until you know their personality.
Because that can make or break somebody.
Somebody could be the most amazing personality, their
views align with you.
But from the outset, it was just another
face.
But then once you see what they do
and how they act, then you start to
love them.
And you love their face and everything about
them.
So that's why the bar shouldn't be how
attracted.
And a lot of the guys who do
have that kind of bar, they're some of
the guys who continue to stay single.
Because they're comparing against an imagination.
Don't compare against an imagination.
Compare against reality.
And that imaginary person that you're thinking of
would also have to like you.
They have to exist, number one, then they
have to like you.
So it's not like you're comparing against four
options that are in front of you.
Like I can marry this person.
I can propose to each four of these
people.
That's different.
But if you're just looking at one person
and comparing them to an imagination in your
head, you're in for a long road.
So what do you tell somebody who is
very...
It's a phrase list.
What do you tell somebody who is very
clearly picky only from the perspective of physical
attraction?
Like they won't speak to anybody that they
find even remotely unattractive.
I personally don't advise those people.
Some people can only learn by getting burned.
Keep suffering, right?
Keep acting like the way you're acting right
now.
Because if anyone was going to say something,
his mom or dad should have told him
this.
A friend can't tell him this.
Why would he listen to me, right?
Continue to...
Some people who are that spoiled and that
picky, they won't learn from words.
From experience, they don't learn from words.
They learn simply from suffering.
And eventually, the clock keeps ticking like an
athlete.
Like an athlete.
Your chances just every year that passes by,
you're missing out, missing out, missing out, missing
out until there comes a point your pool
is so small, right?
Your pool is so small that you're going
to face the reality, right?
Of what you cooked.
I feel like I've met a lot of
guys who will have a certain bar that
they're setting for themselves and then end up
single into their 30s, not because they couldn't
find anybody, but because of the people that
they found.
They just weren't hitting this imaginary bar that
they've set.
And from the destiny perspective, that's going to
be the risk of someone else, right?
And sometimes people have hasad.
They suffer from hasad in their life.
And they may be like the number one.
You can imagine this is the catch, male
or female.
And who knows, maybe hasad affected their life.
And you see that their marriage situation really
doesn't pan out to be anything that anybody
imagined, right?
And it's almost like a train wreck.
So sometimes hasad, people get hasad in life.
It is something.
And sometimes people are so praised so much
that they're living in la la lands.
Yeah, that's a problem.
I think something that, again, having just had
my nikah done a few weeks ago, something
that we were very intentional about was not
posting really anything on social media, except for
saying like, hey, we're now in relationships.
What do you think of this idea of
people, as soon as they have their nikah
done, they have these big, elaborate, not just
events, but then also posts that are all
over social media afterwards?
I always get worried about those types of
things, like sharing your personal life on social
media.
Some people say hasad cannot come through a
screen, maybe.
But a lot of people can really feel
bad that your life is so good.
So why would you make other people feel
bad?
Yeah, right.
You make people feel that they're missing out.
You make people feel that their life is
no good.
I don't like it.
I'm not a fan of that.
Right.
I think it's a very difficult boundary to
tell, because I think a lot of people
- Secondly, you're a day youth.
No one's doing this to look at you,
right?
Right?
The guy's looking at your post.
No one is expanding the screen to look
and see if your beard is trimmed.
I don't know, Shaykh.
I was looking flying.
He's looking to the right.
He's going to the other side and looking
at your wife.
Then he's either going to commit sins, make
you a day youth, or he's going to
say, all right, no hasad for him, right?
And he's going to insult you in other
ways, right?
So it doesn't go well the other way.
This guy is a day youth type.
You know, he's on his way to be
in day youth.
I think you guys know what a day
youth is.
Of course.
It's somebody who almost accepts for his wife
to be stared at in the haram.
He accepts that.
I think there's a lot of day youths.
Yep.
There was a poor guy.
Listen to this.
By the way, if you're on Instagram, you
can hop over here, right?
You can hop over to YouTube and see
both screens.
If you're on Instagram, listen to this story.
I'm on YouTube one day and I'm on
a channel and this guy's video shows up.
And this guy says, brothers, and he's wearing
a kufi and a thobe.
And I'm thinking maybe he's going to give
a wad or something, but he's a young
guy.
And he says, brothers, why are you calling
me a day youth?
Why are you insulting me on my channel
and saying I'm a day youth, right?
I'm not a day youth.
I pray five times a day.
I fast.
I memorize the Quran.
Don't call me a day youth, right?
And I'm like, why are people calling me
a day youth?
So I click on the channel and just
look at the thumbnails.
You're a day youth, right?
This guy has every single picture, every video
close up with him and his new bride.
Multiple videos.
Oh, we're going here.
We're going to get coffee.
We're going here to do this.
Him and his bride are right there and
they're snuggling and stuff.
No, you're a day youth, right?
I think, is there a line that you
could tell of wanting to make content on
the internet and do these and being like
a social, like a publicly facing family, but
then also not be a day youth?
Why would you, why?
Why would you give an opportunity to everyone
stare at your wife?
It's good content.
Good content.
You want to make money?
There's a lot better ways to make money,
right?
If you're going to do haram, might as
well do many other haram things too.
That is far better content and makes you
far more money.
Right?
If you're being a day youth, be a
day youth fully.
Yeah.
No, but in seriousness, it's not a way
to make content.
There's a lot of ways to make content,
right?
You can make a podcast.
Don't only go, you only go in public
if you have something great to say, right?
But to entertain people through your family, it
just doesn't sit right with me at all.
It doesn't sit right to me.
They just passed in California.
There's a lot of channels like YouTube channels,
TikTok profiles that were family.
They only produce family content and they would,
it wasn't, nobody's being a day youth, but
they were like publicly advertising their kids and
recording their lives for content.
And so they just, some laws were just
passed like for protecting children.
From being overused.
Yeah.
By this new generation of parents who has
no common sense.
And it was also with the money because
all of the money was put, it's now
put in a trust that they have access
to when they turn 18.
Wow.
Yeah.
As opposed to just like the parents, like
putting their five-year-old online, making a
ton of money off of it.
And then the kid's not getting any benefit
down the line because the parents burned it
all.
It's abuse.
It's a type of abuse.
No doubt about it.
100%.
I think, okay, how much longer do we
have?
10, 20 minutes.
There's pizza here.
Is it hot?
Let's see.
10, 20 minutes.
And then we check out this pizza.
Who is it?
Is it?
How thin is the pizza is the question?
Pretty thin, Sam's.
Sam's?
Like Sam's Club?
No, no.
We have a brother here.
His name is Sam.
Yeah.
Sam's Club Pizza.
Do they have, is Sam's Club Pizza the
same as Costco Pizza?
Sam's Club and Costco is, yeah, it's all
the same.
BJ's, Samsung.
But no, this is a actual pizzeria.
His name is Sam.
I think we have a hard stop in
about five minutes.
So we'll stop after that.
Okay, no problem.
Um, okay.
I think, uh, just generally, I know that
there's, um, you're obviously very tapped in with,
with the youth of your community.
Yeah.
I know that you have probably had a
ton of young people either, uh, in the
premarital phase or the recently marital phase, um,
come to you with like very, I don't
want to say stupid, but stupid complaints or
concerns.
Like what?
Um.
Young married couples, you're saying?
Yeah.
Okay.
Young married couples are couples that are about
to get married.
So important.
Some people come to you with a crisis
and you have to walk them off the
ledge and wake them up and say, this
is not a crisis.
This is not divorceable by any means, right?
This is not divorce, uh, problems.
Divorce problems are huge.
And sometimes just people need a wake up
call.
That's it.
Has somebody ever come to you and said,
I'm going to divorce her?
Yeah.
Uh, they were going to break up a
marriage because of, uh, one family member complaining
that the other family member, the other side
doesn't respond to the text fast enough.
And I knew you saw the text, right?
Right.
She said, I know she saw the text
because she replied to somebody who texted her
after me.
So break up the whole thing.
So that's like, you got to walk the
families off the ledge on this.
So at what point in this potential divorce
process did they come to you?
Like they were like, they'd already, you know,
done.
Like they were fired up.
They were fired up and they were about
to tell their son, no divorce, no marriage
to this family because she's rude.
So she may be rude at that moment.
She may be, have done something wrong.
There's no, no one's perfect, but that's not
divorce, a reason for a divorce, a reason
to break up an engagement, right?
You have to actually, it's not that you
have low standards, but you got to be
practical.
People will make, they'll make mistakes after marriage
that are far worse than this, right?
But what breaks the whole thing is, uh,
it has to be big.
Yeah.
It has to be something really serious.
Okay.
Following that thread, what's the dumbest reason that
you've seen a couple get divorced over?
Um, well, I'll tell you one of the
dumbest reasons for somebody to reject the other
party or sorry, to, to break, to, to
be the cause of a breakup is when
they said that they want to get married,
but they don't want to have enough kids
for another five years, right?
That's to me, you, you're harming yourself and
you just wasted this person's time because when
people get married, the assumption is one, two,
three maximum years.
But to say, I don't have kids for
five years, it's a bit much.
So whose side broke it off?
The, the girl's side.
And so it was the guy who was
saying that like, I don't know.
He wanted to have kids like within a
year or two, but not five.
You don't wait five years.
Now he's going to be in his thirties.
Yeah.
Right.
That's like a ridiculous request.
That's basically saying, uh, you're shooting yourself in
the foot.
But the stupidest reason for a divorce, uh,
most people, I think are, are, it gets
stupid in the engagement.
It gets silly.
Sometimes families get silly in the engagement, but
after people are married, I think they really
try to stay married for a long time.
That's the goal.
That's the goal.
And they, and they fight through a lot
of things if they truly are attached to
each other.
But the silly stuff, I usually see it
in the engagement and I see it from
usually the family members more so than the
people, the husband and wife.
So on that specifically on the engagement part,
something that I think, like just, we were
talking about before with like, expect to, with
respect to, uh, Mahad expectations.
It depends on the culture with respect to
an engagement period.
When is that period after the Fatah?
Is it after the Ketb-i-Ktab?
Is it after like, at what point do
you consider the engagement period?
Okay.
Very good.
Engagement is simply an agreement to marry in
the future.
Okay.
That renders us, we are no longer looking
for one, looking for options.
Yeah.
We're settled, but we just have to settle
certain life affairs first before we get married.
Okay.
So the engagement, by the way, if it
goes too long, it could be dangerous.
Um, it could be dangerous for multiple reasons.
You can invite problems or you could possibly
get so attached to each other and do
haram.
Right.
So engagement is valuable in that saying in
principle, we're good with you.
But if I don't know you very well,
we're not going to get married right away.
In principle, you're, we're good.
Let's have an engagement period of time.
This is permitted in Islam in which we'll
continue to meet, but we won't marry yet.
Maybe some of the layers of the onions
will peel that we'll, we'll discover something rotten.
So what if, what if you're from a
culture that does, for example, Egyptians, uh, even
within our own, even among Egyptians, like sometimes
people will do the Nikah or Ketb-i
-Ktab and then a year later do the
Walima or sometimes they'll do what they did
before.
That's a problem too.
So between Nikah and moving in together should
not be too long because that's now, she
has now two men in her life, prominently
her dad and her husband.
She's married to a husband, but she's actually
really not married to him.
They're not actually married.
Practically speaking by Sharia, of course they're married,
right?
But if by Sharia we're married, then that
means I have certain rights.
Yeah.
And you have certain rights.
But now you're actually living with your dad.
So who are you, which way is she
going?
If her dad says, come, come at nine,
the husband says, no, let's stay out till
10.
So where is she going with this?
They're going to fight.
There's going to be a fight.
So it should not be really long.
It should just be for practical purposes.
So on that note, and kind of last
question here, with respect to the engagement period,
you said that it could be too long.
What's too long of an engagement period?
I would imagine that six to nine months
is the ideal.
In six months, if the person is bad,
he's hiding something, we'll see it.
If their family is odd, too odd, too
weird for us, and we don't match, our
cultures really clash badly.
It'll emerge in the span of six to
nine months.
Yeah.
And that's really what you want when you
don't know each other, right?
And sometimes families really know each other inside
out, and they won't need that much.
In fact, maybe they only need that much
because let's say the guy, he's moving from
student to employee, right?
From student life to employment.
Then you just need that nine month period,
right?
So it's practical.
So I would hover around half a year
to a year.
And I would say that some people need
far less than that.
And we're going now to the 40-somethings
who they know life very well.
They're not going to need much engagement.
They're adults.
Probably just the engagement is for their families
to adjust to the whole scenario.
Have you heard about an engagement lasting too
long?
Yeah, in Egypt, they do it all the
time.
Five years, six years.
I'm like, what is the point of all
this, right?
Like, what's the point?
Why does it take that long?
I think he's saving up, I think, or
something.
I don't know.
Okay.
But you've seen it, right?
In Egypt, they have long engagements and you
just don't understand why.
What is the point of this?
I know one guy told me they had
an engagement for four years, right?
That's great.
And it's like, what is the point of
all this?
So my Arabic is not great.
But I know that there's a word in
Arabic specifically when you're saving money for the
sake of marriage.
It's like as opposed to saving money for
the sake of a car.
Like it's yakowin.
It's literally to save money for the sake
of marriage.
Correct.
Is this, I'm assuming that this is other
cultures have this too.
It just blew my mind when I realized
there's a word for it.
That's why the Prophet said, you are accepting
his deen and his character.
So in deen, you have obligations as a
man.
I'm not going to just care about your
obligation to fast and pray and you're fulfilling
those obligations.
What about the obligations to pay the way
and protect your family?
To fund and protect your family.
So would you say, for example, all right,
I'm a medical student.
Yeah.
I have no income.
Medical student's different because you know what trajectory
he's on.
It's almost like a guaranteed trajectory.
Yeah.
As much as we can guarantee anything.
But let's say a guy who is working
any other job or he's a student and
he's a historian, right?
And he said, I'm going to finish my
history PhD next year.
And then I hit the job market.
Well, you hit the job market as a
historian.
Nobody knows what's going to happen.
You're not in a guaranteed path.
So then your deen won't right now be
accepted.
In the sense, not that your personal deen,
but how are you going to fulfill the
obligation to care for these people financially?
Yeah.
So am I now going to risk to
put my daughter in a financial risk situation
or a financial unknown?
That would be, seems like maybe haram for
me to do that, right?
To put her, yeah, okay, marry this guy.
Be in love with this guy.
Who knows what's going to happen?
You may be homeless.
You may be living with his mom.
You may be living in hotels.
You may be living here again.
That seems to be not right.
And no dad would do that.
That's fair.
As a dad, you're going to say, I
want to see receipts.
Again, it's very different.
If I know you from childhood and we're
all family friends, it's different.
We can cover until you figure things out.
That's different.
But if you're somebody that you're coming and
proposing and applying to this family and be
part of it and you want to take
on responsibility, I need to see receipts.
I need to see some paychecks, pay stubs,
right?
That's a fair ask.
Minimum 100K in the bank account.
In the bank account.
Well, I think, okay, we have a hard
stop.
Okay.
Yeah, we got to pray too.
Yeah.
We're good.
But y'all got to pray.
Okay.
Jazakallah khair.
This was perfect.
That's my pleasure.
That's exactly what we're looking for.
My pleasure.
We really appreciate your time.
Yeah.
Appreciate everybody else's time for tuning in and
listening to this conversation on marriage and mahr.
And too much mahr.
So listen, you go to impairs.io, I
-N, no iqlab, I-N-P-A-I
-R-S.io. Sign up if you're interested
in hearing on the 27th is around the
corner.
What happens if someone signs up on the
26th?
Do you still go through them?
Then they're in the next month.
For the next batch.
Okay.
So sign up.
And also what we're trying to offer is
mentorship for people.
And it really, there is a lot of
knowledge needed to pave the way.
And that's why I think mentorship or lessons
even in marriage to parents of tweens is
going to really help in the future.
And we plan on doing that at starboardmarriage
.com.
We plan on giving those kinds of lessons
to people, talking, just making them aware.
Because I'm telling you, some kids, they're 13
years old.
They mumble and they shake your hand like
this.
They don't look at you.
They don't know how to make small talk.
You say, how are you doing?
Good.
You don't know how to make small talk.
Your parents, your dad has oppressed you.
Your dad has misled you in life.
He's not preparing you for life.
He just physically produced your body and he
feeds you.
But he didn't prepare you for life.
And I can't tell you how much there's
a lot of that.
And you have an all-star lineup too
of mentors.
You have Imam Safwan, Imam Merchant, Hamid Hassan.
We got great mentors and parents need the
mentoring.
And we're going to have events for parents
to get mentorship, to pave the way.
At the very least, teach your son to
shake hands properly with a good handshake.
Make eye contact with the person, smile and
initiate talk.
If the other person says, how are you?
Don't answer and say, fine.
And that's it.
Say, fine.
How about yourself?
Right.
Don't say you to an adult and say
yourself.
Those little things stick in a person's mind.
This is a good kid.
In the future, we'll keep an eye on
this kid.
Right.
Those are things that are important.
And for women, believe it or not.
One guy said he was thinking about a
woman until he saw a little cracking up
out loud in the masjid.
And they said, what kind of crazy person
is this?
Right.
You don't have any akhlaq in the house
of Allah cracking up out loud like this.
In front of everyone in the masjid.
You don't have any akhlaq.
Right.
Like you're some kind of kooky person.
Maybe that's extreme.
I'm not telling you right and wrong.
I'm telling you what perception is.
And perception is a reality.
You know what's funny is on that in
particular.
Yeah.
I was in the masjid with my dad
and my brother.
Yeah.
And there was a rumba.
That was, you know, like those little vacuums
that go by.
Yeah.
And it came by.
And we were the only ones in the
masjid.
And it came by and it smacked my
dad's leg as he's leading salah.
I thought this was incredibly funny.
Yeah.
So I left.
Yeah.
And I was like, you know, these things
happen.
Like funny situations happen.
My dad cooked me.
He was so mad that I laughed in
the masjid.
Yeah.
When was this?
When you were a child?
Six months ago.
Alhamdulillah, you're already married, right?
Alhamdulillah.
All right.
So that's still learning.
Still learning.
Yeah.
You know, it's my dad didn't go through
the mentorship course.
But if those old school folks didn't need
mentorship courses, they didn't, you know, that all
the mentorship, all marriage talk is basically stuff
that was common sense 25 years ago in
the old country.
Somehow coming to America, you start to rot.
Your akhlaq starts to rot.
Everything rots.
Something about the US, your bank account goes
up.
Your outward life goes up.
Everything else goes up.
The kids get taller, right?
But everyone else rots and the most basic
common sense akhlaq rots.
It's the downfall of an empire in the
US.
It totally is.
It's a toxic culture.
Yeah.
I'm totally with, what's his name?
Leonard Sachs.
That it's nothing other than a toxic culture.
Yeah.
I think last thing, we're giving out a
ton of money on Inpears Mesjid.
If you're in the US or Canada and
you go to our website, Inpears.io, you
go over to the Mesjid tab.
We have a waitlist.
We already have like 800 people.
We haven't actually launched it yet.
We're giving out a ton of money to
the people who sign up and are on
the waitlist.
And if you recommend people, we give out
even more money.
Exactly.
What do you mean giving money away?
Literally, we're giving out rewards.
So a couple hundred dollars for the people
who are number one on the waitlist.
And you can earn, work your way up
the ranks by recommending more people.
Yep.
All right.
Alhamdulillah.
Very good.
Very good.
Thank you all very much.
Unfortunately for everybody here, we can't take the
Q&A.
We got to go.
But we'll be back Tuesday.