RIYADH, 10 May 2005 — A new marriage website eZawaj.com, after the success of Qiran.com and Nasebak.com, is becoming hugely popular in the Kingdom and the Gulf states with over 700,000 registered members. It is recording more than 1.5 million hits per day.
“The UAE is second only to Saudi Arabia in the number of users,” said Mansor Al-Johar, president of Trans Finite, Texas-based Saudi-American Company, that owns it. “The precautions to protect users’ privacy and strict monitoring has made this matrimonial website popular in the Kingdom and the Gulf states and has attracted hundreds of thousands of members, who have paid a registration fee of $50 for a year,” said Al-Johar.
Asked how helpful the marriage sites have been to unmarried men and women, Mohammed Shurrab, chief executive officer of z.grocer.com, a major business website to be launched shortly, said that ‘we don’t have exact figures of girls and boys, who have married after meeting and chatting online. I have participated and visited similar marriage sites and I can only say that there are many registered members who don’t search for life partners seriously”.
“Many of them visit the site for gossip,” said Shurrab. He said that he did not want to debate the ethical part of the business, but is sure that these websites generate a lot of revenue for their promoters.
Abed Al-Shalabi, a Palestinian executive in Riyadh, however differs with Shurrab on many points. He said that this was a new trend in the Kingdom, indeed a helpful one in a closed society like this where men cannot get to meet women.
“Many people, mainly unmarried boys and girls, surf the Internet sites in search of suitable partners and a lot of them have been successful in tying the knots through the websites like eZawaj.com,” said Al-Shalabi, adding that this trend indicates changing times. He said that he was personally aware of some instances that eventually led to the marriage. “Early this month, a marriage between a boy living in Makkah and girl living in the Indian city of Lucknow was solemnized on Internet after they met on a marriage site,” said Mohammed Azman, an Indian engineer.
Whatever the truth, website promoters believe that the sites are of great help for boys and girls in Saudi Arabia. “I believe this service is safer for both Saudis and expatriates,” Al-Johar said. “We do not allow explicit language or any type of harassment on the site and any complaint mailed to us is taken seriously,” said the promoter.
He said that as part of their protection, the site managers had strict norms to follow in the website’s chat room with the warning that vulgar members will be taken care of.
The promoters said of the success of eZawaj.com that the “alarming number of unmarried people and the difficulties of marriage — such as high dowry and limited social network — compelled the site owners to utilize the Internet positively and make it possible for people to meet for the purpose of marriage and establishing a family.”
