HOD Offline Registration - Santa Clara - Sept 29th, 2012

Welcome to Half Our Deen Offline. The event will be held on Saturday September 29th, in Santa Clara, and will hosted by Baba Ali.

Here is how it works:

The typical matchmaking event held by other organizations is limited to the “halal speed dating” method, where you speak to one person for a few minutes, and speak to many throughout the evening. Then, you have to decide which one you want to speak to at greater length for the potential of marriage down the road. The reason this concept often fails is because this notion has been borrowed by those who use it for dating – not for marriage. Since a date is a connection for just a few hours (dinner, movie, etc.), this may work for those individuals looking for just that. But for practicing Muslims who don’t date, the process often fails. Furthermore, these events are often open to the public, so you have no control of the man/woman ratio or the age gap, which are two of the reasons that such a negative stigma is associated with these events. Although these types of events may work for non-Muslims who date, they don’t work for Muslims who are serious about getting married. It is understood that you need to spend more than three minutes with someone to find your other half.

Half Our Deen Offline has taken a completely new approach to this process and has designed their Muslim Matchmaking events differently. Here are some of things that make HOD Offline different:

A. Compatibility: The event is not open to everyone. Participants are selected based on survey results. The survey you will complete will tell us a little about you and what you’re looking for. The results of your survey helps us put you at the right table with people that you’re more like to be compatible with.

B. Balance: We try to control the men/women ratio by requiring all attendees to prepay for the event. To help discourage people from backing out of the event, we have made the event fee $75 and non-refundable. Even though we can never be guaranteed with a positive ratio of men/women, we have yet to see any other organization that comes even close to holding a balanced event at Half Our Deen Offline.

C. Privacy: Unlike other events where the location is public knowledge, Half Our Deen Offline events, just like our website, are completely private. Half Our Deen adverts will only mention the city, the date and time, but not the exact location of the event to keep the event private. Details about the exact location are only sent to those who purchase a seat for the event, because the only people who should know who is attending is the event are people at the event.

D. Contact: No matter how organized the event is, there is only so much you can learn from a large group of people in just a few hours. There may be things that you want to raise in an initial conversation without making it sound like an interrogation. These could include questions such as: Are you divorced? Do you have kids? Etc. This is why all attendees are require to have a private profile on www.halfourdeen.com ($5/month) so that if someone finds you interesting at the event, they can learn more about you without having to put you through an interview. Also, if you find someone interesting, you can contact them online and avoid the awkward situation of getting rejected in front of a room full of people or on the flipside, being caught in a situation where people who you barely know are asking for your personal email address or cell number. The HalfOurDeen.com website also allows you to block anyone that you don’t want to speak to so if for any reason things don’t go well, you can quickly disconnect from that person (that’s much harder to do if they have your personal email/phone). Finally, HalfOurDeen.com is completely PRIVATE, which means that only members of the site can see your profile. The site is so private that you can’t even do same gender searches, since two best friends could be on the site, and they would never know it.

E. Personality: The event has personality (literally). We believe that the best way to learn about someone is to put them in a comfortable environment. So, at our event, we do different activities and first activity everyone does is to take a personality test. This will tell everyone a bit about you and what makes you unique. You’ll get a sticker, based on your personality color, to put on your name badge. Imagine being able to learn about someone before you even say Assalammu’ Alaikum to them. How cool is that? And that’s just our first activity. Half Our Deen Offline has a series of activities and special games designed to help you learn about all the different people at the event in a natural way.

F. Baba Ali: The event is hosted by YouTube sensation Baba Ali, who has made countless videos on marriage. His personality and sense of humor helps keep the event light and fun.

G. Not your typical Muslim Event: This means we actually start on time. I know most events say they will start on time, and that is only for the early birds to realize that on time means 30 minutes late. With Half Our Deen, we are serious about punctuality. The event is meant for serious Muslims, and thus we charge $75 for each seat, which helps filter out all those who aren’t serious. Because of Half Our Deen’s success rate, we expect the seats to fill up quickly just like our past two events. So, if you’re waiting for the day before the deadline to complete your survey, you’re probably not going to get in. Also, table preferences are based on first come, first serve. The last person to get a seat will get the last choice of which table they will be sitting at. Since tables are based on certain criteria (age, views on Islam, etc.), it is best to sign up early rather than late.

H. Half Our Deen Success: In our first event, 48 people got a seat and we had 10 people matching up! At our next event, 69 people got a seat and 18 people matched up! Half Our Deen Offline is different than your typical Muslim Matchmaking events, and the results speak for themselves. Of course, we cannot guarantee success, but we are working hard to make the event different and fun with the hope that there will be success in it InshAllah.

So, if you’re serious about getting married, follow these instructions to attend our upcoming event:

  1. Sign up on www.halfourdeen.com and get your profile up (do this FIRST).
  2. Fill out the survey (follow the link below).
  3. If you get an email notifying you that you’re a good fit for the event, make sure to make payment ($75) for your Offline event seat as soon as possible.
  4. Once payment is received, an email will be sent to you within 24 hours with the exact location of the event. Make sure to enter a valid email address (one that you actually check) in the survey.

Jazak Allah Khair

HOD Offline Team