Salaam Swipe app offers 'halal' dating for Muslims

Each Muslim community is divided on ethnic lines as well as sectarian lines in the app

A young man from Canada had launched a new Tinder-style dating app for Muslims called Salaam Swipe.

Khalil Jessa, whose Muslim dating app is now available on Apple’s app store, has already been receiving a positive feedback from Muslims who are eager to try it.

"People have seen this and given me tremendous support because they know that for Muslims in particular it's a lot more difficult to meet people within their communities, simply because we have more gender segregation and, you know, things like that," Jessa said.

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Jessa further informed that each Muslim community is divided on ethnic lines as well as sectarian lines. “Sectarian sounds like a dirty work but it's really not. It just means Sunni or Shia. Those divisions, as well as gender divisions, makes it hard for people to meet each other serendipitously. We're trying to mimic that serendipitous meeting through an app."

Just like Tinder, Jessa’s app also has the swipe feature which works in a similar way. If a user likes someone’s profile, they swipe right, whereas if they do not like a profile, they swipe left. However, unlike Tinder, Jessa claims that his app is better equipped to protect the privacy of the users and is not a ‘hook up’ tool.

"People that are coming to Salaam Swipe are there because they are Muslim and that already shows that the people that they match with will have a deeper connection. They'll have something to start with. We have filters that allow you to filter based off of your denomination as well as your religiosity. So you can say you're a liberal Sunni or a conservative Shia," he continued.

Another interesting feature about the app is that it gives users enhanced privacy, "like an incognito mode that will hide you from your friends and family".

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Jessa maintains that his app is not very different from the traditional way Muslims find spouses. "In Muslim communities often times the way that people used to meet each other, and still do, is ... they'd send a picture and a little bio to this one family, then the other family would send the same thing, and if two people say they like each other then they go meet each other. It's the same model without the middleman."

Salaam Swipe is not the first Muslim dating app as others, such as, Crescent and Minder have already swept the market.

This article originally appeared on CBC News