The Times Magazine 27meet Muhammad Malik at an upmarket
coffee place in Borough Market, not
far from London Bridge. We order
our drinks – Americano for me, hot
chocolate for him – and make polite
small talk while we stand and wait. He
lives, he says, way out in west London,
near Heathrow, but works in Holborn
as a financial technology consultant. He
spends a lot of time on the Piccadilly
Line and punctuality is not always his strong
suit. He likes to tell himself that high-quality
hot chocolate provides all kinds of health
benefits, even though, deep down, he knows
he just has a sweet tooth. The barista hands
us our mugs and we move to a quiet corner.
Malik, who is 29, sits upright and smiles.
He has large, expressive eyes, wears a nice
cable-knit jumper and, every now and then,
will absently stroke his thick black beard.
During these moments, I am conscious
of the fact that there are many women –
hundreds, probably thousands of women- who would swap places with me in a
heartbeat. Over the past few weeks, Malik
has become one of the most pursued men
on the planet, as a result of an audacious
billboard stunt, sponsored by Muzmatch, a
Muslim dating site. Women flock to his social
media profiles and try to attract his attention
by replying to his posts with kisses, winking
emojis and any number of other digital
dropped handkerchiefs.
They leave coy voice notes in his
Instagram direct messages. They send
emails introducing themselves replete with
photographs, personal histories and their
educational qualifications. These online
approaches occur hourly, and such is his
global appeal, it has become impossible
to predict where the next one will come
from. “There’s been a flood of lovely,
beautiful women from Tanzania recently,”
he says. “There have been messages from
loads of countries. From every continent.” He
is, romantically, what you might call a man
with options.
A few weeks ago, though, things were not
like this at all. Malik had been thinking about
love and marriage for a while. “That if there
was someone who I could, you know, add to
their happiness and they add to mine, then
that would be a beautiful thing.” His criteria
was straightforward: a Muslim woman in her
twenties who shares his spiritual side, who
can keep up with the “banter” of his loud
Punjabi family, but who also has a grounded
quality that would help temper his own
tendency towards extroversion and scattiness.
“If you look at my desk, it’s an absolute mess
of Post-it Notes and books I’ve opened and
read the first chapter of,” he says. “So somebody
who is more organised, to be honest.”
But, for whatever reason, he had been
unable to find the right girl. He did not
have options. “It’s tough out there,” he says.
Knowing of his predicament, a friend
approached him with a radical suggestion.
What if they paid for a load of roadside
billboards advertising his availability? The
friend worked for Muzmatch and told him
they would cover the cost of the adverts.
Malik chewed it over. On the one hand, it
would be a little embarrassing. But then, on
the other hand, it would be funny. Plus, well,
it might actually work. So he agreed. “It was
like, what’s the worst that can happen?”
He posed for photos, reclining with acheerful grin while pointing to a sign reading
“Save me from an arranged marriage”.
A website address where prospective partners
can get in touch, findMALIKawife.com, was
also listed and which, when you visit, includes
information about Muzmatch. At the start of
January, these adverts were plastered across
billboards in areas of London, Birmingham and
Manchester with large Muslim communities.
Almost immediately, his phone began to
glow with messages. The first were from
mates who had seen the posters and thought
it was hilarious. The next wave of messages
were from women he already knew. “They
said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were actually
looking,’ ” he says, mimicking a sort of sudden
feline interest. “ ‘Let’s have a chat.’ That was
probably day two.”
And then very quickly, everything went
mad. He walked into his mosque to find thateveryone wanted to rib him about his sudden
fame. He was, they gleefully told him, a “viral
sensation”. By the end of the first week, he
had received more than 1,000 messages. By
the second week of January, that number had
more than tripled.
In person, Malik projects an appealing
sense of self-awareness. But he admits he
is also frazzled by all the interest, like the
protagonist of a fairytale who, having once
been cursed by scarcity, is now cursed with
magical abundance.
So, for example, he now has to try veryhard not to lose himself in the thrill of the
constant attention. “Making sure that I’m
not a victim of dopamine slavery, constantly
checking my phone and looking at the
number of people who are following me. And
I’ve been tested by that,” he says. He has to
turn his phone off and spend time in prayer
and meditation. He also feels duty-bound to
respond to every inquiry he receives, which is
a delicate job when it comes to saying thanks
but no thanks. “I feel I’ve got to communicate
in a very empathetic way,” he says, brows
furrowed. “So if a lady is not geographically
nearby, say they’re in east Asia, or they’re in
a different age range and a lot more mature
than myself, how do I deal with that?”
Then there are the women who, perhaps,
are in touch for the wrong reasons. Some
of the applicants from “less well-developed
countries”, he says, are transparently hoping
to use a marriage in order to relocate toI
MUZMATCH SAID IT WOULD COVER THE COSTS. HE
THOUGHT, ‘WHAT’S THE WORST THAT CAN HAPPEN?’
His billboard in Perry Barr, Birmingham