A Matter of Destiny

In high school, my schoolmate Monis Rehman’s senior high yearbook page was vastly different from those of his classmates. Instead of the family photos, insipid quotes and song lyrics, and declarations of undying love for his friends, he ringed his page with a series of small pictures, pulling a different face – crossed eyes, googly mouth – in each one.

I remember being vastly shocked by Monis’s daring, and was reminded of it yet again when I received an email a month ago introducing me to a new service called Naseeb.com, a Web site and online community for Muslims around the world. After a little investigating, I found that Naseeb was run by no other than Monis Rehman. A little over ten years on from high school, Monis has again done something out of the mold; he’s become the CEO of Naseeb Networks, Inc., a Silicon Valley new media company that includes Naseeb.com. Impressed with his yearbook page back then and even more with his achievements since, I decided to join Naseeb to see what the buzz was all about.

On the surface Naseeb works like many other dating web sites: I signed up for free, and was given basic member services, such as being able to fill out an online profile and search for other people through keywords. What powers Naseeb, though, is the system of “friends” that you can add to your list, after signing an agreement that you indeed know the person and are friends with them in real life. This allows you to build up a “Circle of Friends” of people that you know and trust. I was surprised to find eight fellow Karachi American School grads, and once I was connected to them, I was connected to over fifteen hundred other people on the site automatically!

Unlike other dating sites, though, Naseeb is first and foremost a Web site for Muslims, and it shows. On finding a compatible person, you send that person a “Salam” instead of a wink (but you can “kiss” or “slap” them in Instant Messenger). When you have new mail, a desi man with a moustache announces in a Punjabi accent, “You’ve Gat Ma-a-a-a-il”! When entering your profile you can put up pictures for everyone to see or keep them private, or you can choose an icon for yourself from a cast of coy Muslim animated characters (some with beards, caps, and even hijabs and niqabs). On the more serious side, you can fill out a religious compatibility test to see where you stand on the Muslim spectrum. Being a desi site, though, Naseeb isn’t without its share of chichoras, some of whom have been known to message girls for some definitely haram "fun" not sanctioned by Naseeb (you can preserve your sharam and haya by blocking any member who offends you).

During the first few months of Naseeb’s launch, all services were free, but soon after I joined it went "paid", meaning you need to cough up a monthly fee in order to access the more sophisticated features: being able to chat with other members, Naseeb’s Instant Messenger with audio and video, and being able to e-mail or add as many people as you like, whether or not they’re in your Circle of Friends. When I tried to pay, my credit card was rejected for its Pakistani billing address (and I thought my money was good anywhere!). When I registered my protest, I was told this was only a temporary problem until a deal can be worked out with Bank Al-Falah to process non-US credit card payments (hmph).

The interactive functions of the site are modeled after most popular friend and matchmaking sites, the most obvious example being Friendster, but Monis Rehman is quick to point out that Naseeb is not just a knockoff of other popular Western sites with the same idea. “We quickly establish offline relationships through friends of friends with people you meet online. This introduces a level of trust not present on most sites. You can often verify identities of people you meet online through your real life friends.”

I enjoy exploring the site for its wonderful cultural mix – Naseeb boasts members from every country in the world where there are Muslims. This includes the usual Pakistanis, Middle Easterners, and large Muslim populations in the US and UK, but extends to further fields like Albania, Kenya, and New Zealand. Members make their profiles unique by writing witty things about themselves, putting up pictures in their photo albums, and writing in online journals, combining the best of personal Web sites and blogs together on the site. It’s really fascinating to see the immense variety of experience, philosophy, and outlook that Naseeb members possess. If you ever needed proof that Muslim youth is progressive, spirited, idealistic, and adventurous, then just spend an afternoon looking through Nsseeb profiles.

One thing that characterizes almost all of them, though, is a sense of humor – one of Naseeb’s most notorious members is “Borat”, who takes his inspiration from Ali G’s fictional Kazakhastani preudo-journalist. His alma maters include Harvard, Columbia, and the Kazakhastan Institute of Management, Economics, and Strategic Research, his interests are playing ping-pong and shooting dogs, and his marital status is “widowed!” Says Borat of his search for a soulmate: “i am looking for a woman who has a nice face, no history of mental retardation, and who is pretty, preferably she have plow experience. i am also very good looking. i had a wife, she is dead. she die in a field. but, its ok, i no like her. my new wife i will love very much, i will give her red dress, television, remote control, i will love her, and we will be as one.”

If you get bored with your search for a soulmate or new friends and activity partners, Naseeb has recently introduced an online magazine, Naseeb Vibes. This is a Web site which promotes the views of Muslim writers on a variety of subjects related to the religion and culture of the Muslim world. The magazine is divided into sections such as “Prose Vibes”, “Peace Vibes”, “Polity Vibes”, “Humor Vibes”, and so on, and users can interact and discuss in the Talkbacks section. Despite a few teething problems, the online magazine has a lot of potential, and already boasts impressive contributions from many Naseeb members, including the well known Muslim author Asma Gul Hasan, a number of American Muslim reverts, and Aisha Sarwari, the editor of Vibes.

Monis describes the amazing response that Naseeb has received so far: “Just nine months after launching Naseeb.com, we have over 120,000 members. That’s more than twice the size of the second largest competing site which has been around for over eight years. Naseeb owes its success to the void it has filled for young Muslim Internet users.”

I talked to a few fellow Naseebers and they are, by and large, pleased with what Naseeb has to offer. Maeraj, a seventeen year old girl from Riverside, California, who’s been using the site since December 2003, says that the best feature of the site is the My Journals section, where members can write down their thoughts in blog format and other members can comment on them. Zift, 33, from Saudi Arabia, says that he joined Naseeb for its Muslim crowd and hopes to contribute articles to Naseeb Vibes “covering our misconceptions on history of religion and propaganda.” .

The technical glitches, on the other hand, are enough to drive me and the other Naseebers crazy; chat windows fail to open properly, emails get sent too many times or not at all, and the site has gone down more than once since I’ve joined. And everyone complains vociferously about the recent switch that Naseeb made from being a free site to being a paid site with the best features reserved only for paying members, although it probably means that Naseeb is a good product and people are already getting addicted to it.

But although making Naseeb a paid site has probably disrupted thousands of Muslim matches-in-progress, the Web site shows every indication of being a success. Muslims everywhere are looking for ways to hook up with one another (in more than one sense of the word), and Naseeb provides them a way of doing just that, without compromising on either their freedom or their privacy. And it has just enough of an element of romanticism to appeal to every Muslim (all of whom I firmly believe are romantics at heart). I can’t guarantee that everyone who joins Naseeb will meet their soulmate, but who wants to miss out on the opportunity? After all, sometimes you just have to work at finding your destiny, even if you have to go to China, or online, to do it.