LAHORE, Pakistan — A good man is especially hard to find in this deeply religious country, where bars are nonexistent, unchaperoned conversation between single men and women is frowned upon, and immigration has frayed the neighborhood and family ties that have nurtured arranged marriages for centuries.
So when Amber Khan's parents told her it was time to get married, the 23-year-old fashion student turned to a new matchmaking resource: the Internet.
Khan posted an ad for a husband on Mehndi.com, a "matrimonial" website tailored to Pakistanis. A few weeks later, she was drowning in marriage proposals -- 20 at last count. Her mother is helping her sort through the offerings, and Khan is giddy about the change in her life and her society.
"Everyone has the right to choose their own life partner," Khan said. "They can choose, they can select, they can communicate with them -- they can even meet them before they're married."
The enthusiasm with which increasing numbers of Pakistanis such as Khan have embraced online matchmaking casts a spotlight on the constant tension between modernity and tradition in this overwhelmingly Muslim country.
Even as hard-line religious parties pick up seats in Pakistan's parliament and local headlines are dominated by fears of fundamentalist terrorism, cable television replete with uncensored Western entertainment has become widely available. Clerics bemoan an upswing in "love matches," divorce, liaisons between unmarried couples and an overall decline in morals.
One new television program, in which men and women go on the air and describe their soul mates, then receive e-mail proposals from viewers, has swiftly gone from must-shun to must-see TV. Nadia Mazhar, a producer of the "Shaadi Online" show, says it is part of a revolution that has brought to Pakistan's masses the sort of power over their personal lives that was once available only to the country's more secular elite.
"If you go to the middle class," Mazhar said, "this is a big deal to them -- 'We can do this!' "
With increasing numbers of Pakistanis exposed to Western culture and ideas through the media, study abroad and emigration, as well as better education at home for women, many think a liberalization of sexual attitudes was inevitable. But the scene here is a long way from the freewheeling romantic marketplace of the Western world, as Pakistanis try to adapt new resources to their customs.
For generations, Pakistani parents have arranged their children's marriages, occasionally with the help of a marriage broker. Often, people marry members of their extended family, such as cousins. New couples frequently live with the husband's parents.
The system ensures strong, stable marriages, said Mohammed Hussain, a teacher and administrator at Naeema Islamic University in Lahore. "If a marriage is between families," he said, "every person of both families will try to keep the marriage together."
This centuries-old system is being eroded by a new-media age that preaches Western-style relationships, Hussain said, lamenting the loss of local tradition that he believes also meets Islamic requirements, in which elders should be in charge of their children's lives.
The new matchmaking mediums usually stress that they are intended as tools for marriage rather than casual relationships. Parents can post on Mehndi.com and similar websites on behalf of their children, and all pictures displayed are, says Mehndi founder Hayee Bokhari, "modest."
But there's no guarantee that the sites won't be used for dating. Bokhari, a Pakistani who lives in Canada and launched Mehndi.com in March, estimates that half his users seek dates rather than matrimony. That seems natural to him.
"You just have to show people the way, and they'll find their own path to happiness," Bokhari said.
Although it's a path increasingly being taken by Muslims around the world, the use of the Internet to find a partner has acquired an unsavory taint in some quarters of Pakistan. Newspaper columnists bemoan unseemly surfing in the Internet cafes that have sprouted in even the smallest towns. In one notorious case, several couples met in a private room of one cafe for sexual liaisons, unaware they were being videotaped.
Online streaming video is a cautionary tale for the country's traditionalists but a matter of amusement for Pakistan's new generation of Web surfers, such as Mariam Alam.
The 21-year-old Islamabad teacher cruises Internet chat rooms and has arranged dates with numerous men -- "I've lost count."
Often, she said, the relationships don't last beyond the third date, and usually revolve around secret meetings in cars so as not to destroy Alam's reputation. She was prepared to marry one of the men, she said, but had to call off the wedding when her father found she'd met her fiance online.
"You can't tell [your parents] it was on the Internet. They won't take you seriously," Alam said. "It's the generation gap."
