I really do not know how an owner of a real estate office in Makkah manages to work as an estate agent and simultaneously arrange misyar marriages. Apparently, this man magically transformed his agency into a misyar marriage-fixing center.

In fact he has even prepared an application form that takes details of the groom and the bride. Prospective misyar partners can pay SR100 and fill the form. When two individuals are found to be compatible and who decide to see each other then the groom is asked to pay a SR500 fee. In case both the bride and the groom agree to marry each other, then the amount of money paid to the agent goes up to SR5,000.

Because we are a community that loves to imitate, I’m sure many real estate agencies will follow suit and become misyar-marriage centers. There might even appear a misyar-marriage chain similar to popular fast-food fried chicken joints. I remember when the first fried chicken restaurant in Jeddah opened; it was not soon after that there were copycat fast-food joints at every corner in Jeddah. The same thing will soon happen again and the real estate business may even merge with misyar marriages. Marriage contracts may even come to blend with the selling and buying of property.

In Saudi Arabia, there are at least 1.5 million spinsters. I’m sure many of them may be considering misyar as an option to fulfill their needs. Therefore, the property/misyar marriage agencies could ultimately earn huge amounts of money. This could become a lucrative trade with people earning profits equal to the selling and buying of high-value properties.

I was hoping that Saudi girls wouldn’t be forced to go to a real estate agency and fill out an application worth SR100 in order to find a suitor. I believe this to be an awkward, embarrassing and annoying approach. It would have been more appropriate and convenient if our community worked on establishing charitable institutions to perform such tasks free of charge and faraway from greedy real estate agents.

Having an institution organizing and arranging marriages is much more reliable and suitable for young women and it saves the suitors the amount of money wasted in getting the services of real estate agents.

I think people should work toward freeing the concept of marriage from the shackles of unscrupulous real estate agents. There is a huge difference between land and humans and the contracts of marriage and real estate.