Keep It Halal! A Smartphone Ethnography of Muslim Dating
In: Journal of Religion, Media and Digital CultureSearch for other papers by Farah Hasan in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
This article reveals how Muslim religious identity is impacted by Muslim dating apps. The development of Muslim dating apps within the last decade has led to Muslims seeking partners beyond their physical and social locality. The following research takes inner-Muslim discursive traditions into account in order to examine how Muslim males articulate and negotiate their Islamic identity in the process of partner selection. The research’s methodological approach draws from digital ethnography, with the smartphone as the primary field site. The smartphone ethnography on the app of Muzmatch will demonstrate that users are physically embedded in doctrinally heterogenous contexts. Yet, the religious framework of the app promotes a “doctrinal homogeneity” that finds expression via the discursive articulations of the app users. It will be shown that users are being shaped by the app as they incorporate the religious framework provided by it.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Ahmed, S. (2016). What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
-
Al-Dawood, A., Abokhodair, N., Mimouni, H. E., and Yarosh, S. (2017, June). Against Marrying a Stranger: Marital Matchmaking Technologies in Saudi Arabia. In: DIS ’17: Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, New York: Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 1013–1024.
-
Al-Saggaf, Y. (2013). Males’ Trust and Mistrust of Females in Muslim Matrimonial Sites. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 11(3), pp. 174–192.
-
Ali, N., Phillips, R., Chambers, C., Narkowicz, K., Hopkins, P., Pande, R., and Vänskä, A. (2020). Halal Dating: Changing Relationship Attitudes and Experiences Among Young British Muslims. Sexualities 23(5–6), pp. 775–792.
-
Anderson, L., and Glass-Coffin, B. (2013). I Learn by Going. In: S. Holman Jones, T. E. Adams, and C. Ellis, eds., Handbook of Autoethnography, New York: Routledge, pp. 57–83.
-
Asad, T. (1986). The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.
-
Bendixsen, S. K. N. (2013). The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin: An Ethnographic Study. Leiden: Brill. <http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=1000351>.
-
Bøe, M. (2017). Halal-dating som ungdomskultur. Forhandlinger om ekteskaps- og samlivspraksiser blant norsk ungdom med muslimsk bakgrunn. Prismet (1–2), pp. 9–26.
-
Bunt, G. R. (2018). Hashtag Islam: How Cyber-Islamic Environments are Transforming Religious Authority. Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
-
Cambridge English Dictionary. (2021, January 14). https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/street-cred.
-
Campbell, H. A., Altenhofen, B., Bellar, W., and Cho, K. J. (2014). There’s a Religious App for That! A Framework for Studying Religious Mobile Applications. Mobile Media & Communication 2(2), pp. 154–172.
-
Campbell, H. A., and Evolvi, G. (2020). Contextualizing Current Digital Religion Research on Emerging Technologies. Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies 2(1), pp. 5–17.
-
Campbell, H. A., and Golan, O. (2011). Creating Digital Enclaves: Negotiation of the Internet Among Bounded Religious Communities. Media, Culture & Society 33(5), pp. 709–724.
-
Favero, P., and Theunissen, E. (2018). With the Smartphone as Field Assistant: Designing, Making, and Testing EthnoAlly a Multimodal Tool for Conducting Serendipitous Ethnography in a Multisensory World. American Anthropologist 120(1), pp. 163–167.
-
Gemoll, W., and Vretska, K. (1965). Griechisch-deutsches Schul- und Handwörterbuch. 9th ed. München: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky.
-
Hammer, J. (2015). Marriage in American Muslim Communities. Religion Compass 9(2), pp. 35–44.
-
Husain, F. (2020). Halal Dating, Purdah, and Postfeminism: What the Sexual Projects of Pakistani Women Can Tell Us About Agency. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 45(3), pp. 629–652.
-
Jallad, N. A. (2008). The Concepts of Al-halal and Al-haram in the Arab-Muslim Culture: A Translational and Lexicographical Study. Language Design 10, pp. 77–86.
-
Lo, M., and Aziz, T. (2009). Muslim Marriage Goes Online: The Use of Internet Matchmaking by American Muslims. Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 21(3), p. 1.
-
Lutes, K. (2012). Cross-platform Mobile App Software Development in the Curriculum. Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology 9, pp. 115–124.
-
Moeran, B. (2009). From Participant Observation to Observant Participation. In: S. Ybema, D. Yanow, H. Wels, and F. Kamsteeg, eds., Organizational Ethnography: Studying the Complexities of Everyday Life, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, pp. 139–155.
-
Murthy, D. (2008). Digital Ethnography. Sociology 42(5), pp. 837–855.
-
Nilan, P. (2017). Muslim Youth in the Diaspora: Challenging Extremism Through Popular Culture. London: Routledge.
-
Pasha, S. (2015, Feb 23). Western Muslims Swipe Right to Find Their Match on “Minder”. Daily Beast. https://www.thedailybeast.com/western-muslims-swipe-right-to-find-their-match-on-minder.
-
Postill, J., and Pink, S. (2012). Social Media Ethnography: The Digital Researcher in a Messy Web. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture & Policy 145(1), pp. 123–134.
-
Rochadiat, A. M. P., Tong, S. T., and Novak, J. M. (2018). Online Dating and Courtship Among Muslim American Women: Negotiating Technology, Religious Identity, and Culture. New Media & Society 20(4), pp. 1618–1639.
-
Rooij, L. de (2020). The Relationship Between Online Dating and Islamic Identity Among British Muslims. Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture 9(1), pp. 1–32.
-
Rozario, S., and Samuel, G. (2012). Young Muslim Women and the Islamic Family: Reflections on Conflicting Ideals in British Bangladeshi Life. In: T. Lovat, ed., Women in Islam, Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 25–42.
-
Sahoo, S. (2017). Matrimonial. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 40(2), pp. 354–357.
-
Salvatore, A., and Eickelman, D. F. (2004). Preface. In: A. Salvatore and D. F. Eickelman, eds., Public Islam and the Common Good, Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia 95, Leiden: Brill, pp. xi–xxv.
-
Schiffauer, W. (2016). Ausbau von Partizipationschancen islamischer Minderheiten als Weg zur Überwindung des islamischen Fundamentalismus? In: H. Bielefeldt and W. Heitmeyer, eds., Politisierte Religion: Ursachen und Erscheinungsformen des modernen Fundamentalismus, Suhrkamp Verlag, pp. 418–437.
-
Schwartz, P., and Velotta, N. (2018). Online Dating: Changing Intimacy One Swipe at a Time? In: J. van Hook, S. M. McHale, and V. King, eds., Families and Technology, National Symposium on Family Issues 9, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 57–88.
-
Sen, S. (2020). Tradition – Technology Wedlock: The Paradoxical Modernisation of Matrimony. South Asian Survey 27(2), pp. 172–190.
-
Sofos, S. A., and Tsagarousianou, R. (2013). Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
-
Sotoudeh, R., Friedland, R., and Afary, J. (2017). Digital Romance: The Sources of Online Love in the Muslim World. Media Culture & Society 39(3), pp. 429–439.
-
Stadler, N. (2007). Ethnography of Exclusion: Initiating a Dialogue with Fundamentalist Men. Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 14(1), pp. 185–208.
-
Titzmann, F.‑M. (2013). Changing Patterns of Matchmaking: The Indian Online Matrimonial Market. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies 19(4), pp. 64–94.
-
Varis, P. (2016). Digital Ethnography. In: A. Georgakopoulou and T. Spilioti, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Language and Digital Communication, London: Routledge, pp. 55–68.
-
Walker, L. L., and Eller, J. L. (2016). Raising Capital: Claims of Masculinity Among Men on Match.com. Men and Masculinities 19(1), pp. 42–63.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 2942 | 662 | 77 |
| Full Text Views | 205 | 23 | 3 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 453 | 59 | 9 |
Keep It Halal! A Smartphone Ethnography of Muslim Dating
In: Journal of Religion, Media and Digital CultureSearch for other papers by Farah Hasan in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article reveals how Muslim religious identity is impacted by Muslim dating apps. The development of Muslim dating apps within the last decade has led to Muslims seeking partners beyond their physical and social locality. The following research takes inner-Muslim discursive traditions into account in order to examine how Muslim males articulate and negotiate their Islamic identity in the process of partner selection. The research’s methodological approach draws from digital ethnography, with the smartphone as the primary field site. The smartphone ethnography on the app of Muzmatch will demonstrate that users are physically embedded in doctrinally heterogenous contexts. Yet, the religious framework of the app promotes a “doctrinal homogeneity” that finds expression via the discursive articulations of the app users. It will be shown that users are being shaped by the app as they incorporate the religious framework provided by it.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 2942 | 662 | 77 |
| Full Text Views | 205 | 23 | 3 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 453 | 59 | 9 |