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(RNS) — Binta Diallo and her friends were nearly finished binge-watching “Love Is Blind” when the idea hit.
What if they created their own virtual adaptation of the Netflix dating reality show, stripped down for the coronavirus era, but created by and for Muslim millennials?
"We were just like, ‘Hey, what would this look like in a Muslim version?'” Diallo said. “Quarantine hit and we didn't really have much else going on, and there wasn't really a way to meet someone besides going to the grocery store.”
With mosques closed and Islamic conventions and other religious gatherings cancelled, finding a spouse in a halal, or Islamically permissible, way felt like a hopeless cause for many Muslim singles seeking a spouse.
In April, Diallo and a friend launched Eye Meets Soul, a virtual blind matchmaking experience for U.S. Muslim millennials. The pair hoped to help Muslims of all backgrounds “take a leap of faith." They designed the project so that personal appearance, race and ethnicity would not be first considerations.
Both founders are Muslim young professionals of African heritage who have themselves been looking for years to get married but say they’ve found making a match particularly difficult as Black women. (Diallo’s cofounder asked that her name not be included for privacy reasons.)
In “Love Is Blind,” a TV series that became an instant hit among viewers cooped up at home amid a pandemic, contestants spent several days speed dating without ever laying eyes on one another. Couples who fall in love agree to get engaged, sight unseen.
“We didn't want to, necessarily, erase physical attraction completely,” Diallo said. “We did everything with intention and prayed on it. In our faith tradition, the Prophet Muhammad mentioned the beauty of a person as one of the four attributes you should look after. So we’re not saying that doesn’t matter.”
Instead, the creators said, they hoped to give participants a rare chance to first get to know a potential partner through “conversations of the soul.”
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