The Increasing Trend of Divorces and the Technological Solution for Muslims

“According to the Rutgers University National Marriage Project, the American divorce rate today is more than twice that of 1960, but has declined slightly since hitting the highest point in the country’s history in the early 1980s. Overall, close to 50 percent of marriages started today will end in either divorce or permanent separation. In Canada, the divorce rate is about 37 percent.”[1]

One of the key factors that have been the reason of increasing number of divorce rates is the lack of Relationship Compatibility. According to Dr. Lisa Firestone, a Psychologist, Compatibility exists when couple treats each other with respect and equality, they share companionship and activities.[2] Incompatibility is a subjective term, and it can mean many things depending on one’s marriage. It can be a situation, where you married a person at a young age, when your ideas of life were different but with the passage of time it appears differently. Your personality and beliefs might not be the same as before. There may be event when one social belief may create problem for his/her partner. This may involve the society, culture, ethnicity, religion they share. The incompatibility may also raise due to the fairy tale expectations of the couple for themselves or for their spouse. This is specially the case in a society where it is assumed by default the role of specific gender for example, women will act as housewife etc.

The issue of Relationship Compatibility has the same impact on the Muslim community around the world as faced by the rest of the world, despite of the fact that religiously Divorces (talaq), though Halal (an acceptable Act according to Sharia Law), is considered to be most awful thing to do. Muslims are urged to maintain peace and harmony in their matrimonial relations. According to the study conducted by Mr. Ilyas Ba-Yunus conducted in 1990, the divorce rates among the North American Muslim community stood at 31.14% which was far greater than the rest of the Muslim countries. One of the article published in 2017[3] ranked the arab countries by divorce rates, among which Jordan top the list by 2.6 per 1000 residents, Kuwait 2.2 per 1000 residents and list goes on.

There have been many solutions to the problem, such as early education about the importance of marriages in islam, the role of man and woman, Premarital Counseling and the proper understanding of each other’s world view before marriage so that the compatibility can be achieved.

We are fortunate to live in the times when technological advancements have altered our way of living. Taking opportunity, a startup named Muslim BetterHalf comes with the idea that aims to solve the compatibility issue.

The aim is to provide opportunities to prospective couples to find their compatible better half based on the pre-defined set of logical traits backed by an expert Couple Therapist, coupled with the power of data mining, and A.I algorithm to give a user the best possible Match. Further, unlike other match making apps, Muslim BetterHalf not only provides a platform to discover the prospective Matches, but one can get endorsement of its guardians or parents (a normal practice in Muslim community especially in Sub continent).

[1] https://www.soundvision.com/article/divorce-among-american-muslims-statistics-challenges-solutions

[2] https://www.psychalive.org/relationship-compatibility/

[3] https://stepfeed.com/arab-countries-ranked-by-divorce-rates-1007

The mission of Muslim Betterhalf is to disrupt the conventional method of Match making based on location, through it’s A.I algorithm, enticing features, and lucrative marketing campaign for the Muslim community.

Please find below the currenty status of the stratup

Team: Consists of 10 numbers, including UX/UI designers, developers, Couple therapist, data scientists, etc.

Product: iOS development — Beta launch expected by end of 2019.

Funding: Open for a Seed Round

Contact details:

Mr. Saquib Khan — CEO & Founder

Website: http://www.muslimbetterhalf.com/

Email ID: [email protected]

Phone # (800) 852–1486