Everything people ask us

Muslims in the United Kingdom who want to get married, and the families and mosques around them. First marriage or not, and wherever you are in your practice, you’re welcome.

It’s built around the etiquette the community already keeps: introductions instead of browsing, her wali involved as far as she chooses, no phone numbers, a first meeting a centre can host, and marriage as the only aim.

We don’t issue rulings. Align is an app, not a scholar, and we built it with imams. If you have a question about your own situation, ask an imam you trust.

Starting is free. Your first introduction is free from beginning to end, with no clock running: the first conversation you start stays free for good. You only need a plan to start a second one.

Most people finish in about twenty minutes. Your answers save as you go, so you can stop and come back whenever you like.

No. A sister can name her wali when she signs up, later, or not at all. She decides how much he sees and does.

Just say so, and the questions add a sixth part about it: where you are now, and what you’d like to be different this time.

Yes. Sign up as someone looking for support and you can book counselling with a community centre in the app, with no matching at all. The centre sets the price and you pay them directly.

From your answers, compared with theirs. Faith weighs the most: people whose practice and prayer are close to yours are ranked higher. Among them, everyday life decides most of the order: money, family, and how you’d run a home. Then what you each want from marriage, what you value, how near you live, and your ages. Every day you get up to five new people whose answers fit yours.

Because a gallery of faces makes people feel disposable. You get up to five new people a day. Shortlist anyone you want to keep thinking about, and anyone you haven’t answered makes way for someone new at midnight.

You can set an age range, how far to look, and a few filters. You can’t browse. The matching engine chooses; you decide.

While Align is new, we look past your own area to find you up to five people. If you say you’re happy for us to, we’ll look past your filters too, and show you people who fit a little more loosely. If your own choices are why your list is short, the app tells you which. You’re never introduced across sect, and nobody you’ve blocked or passed on comes back.

Not as one number, because one number makes people rank each other by it. You see where the two of you are alike, what’s worth talking about, and what comes first for each of you, side by side.

Your sect is a firm line: Shia members are introduced to Shia members, and Sunni members to Sunni members and to Muslims who don’t follow a particular sect. Anything else you said you couldn’t live with counts heavily against a match, so those people come last, and only appear when nobody closer is left. Answers about polygamy aren’t offered in the United Kingdom.

Only people you’re introduced to see it clearly. To everyone else it’s blurred or a silhouette, and if either of you passes it goes back to being blurred. Her wali sees the brother’s photo and nobody else’s.

A sister can. One switch keeps hers hidden even after an introduction, until she shares it with him from the chat.

No. There’s no advertising and no data broker. The privacy notice sets out what we collect and why.

In the app, open Settings, then Account Settings, then Delete account. Your photos, details and answers are erased straight away, and the rest thirty days later. Here are the steps with pictures. If you stop using Align, you’re not shown to anybody once you haven’t opened the app for six months, and we delete your account for you after two years, telling you 14 days before.

Only if the conversation has been reported, and every read is logged against the person who made it. Otherwise our support team can look at your account but can’t change anything or act as you.

Because talking to five people at once turns each of them into a back-up. Once you send the first message, every other introduction pauses, for both of you, until that conversation ends.

No, and nobody else can either. Numbers, links, emails and usernames are blocked in messages, even a number split across several. Calls happen inside the app.

A day into your conversation, the brother can ask for a call from the chat, and she decides. If she’s asked her wali to review calls, he sees the request first, and approving it hands the decision back to her. Calls stay inside Align, voice only.

Each week of a conversation you’re both asked, privately, how it’s going. One answer isn’t private: “we’re getting married, inshallah” tells the other person and asks if they feel the same.

Either of you can end it from the chat. The other person is told, kindly, and you’re both free again the same day.

A wali is a woman’s guardian in marriage. Here it’s her father, or the male guardian who stands in his place. She names him, decides how much he sees and does, and can change it whenever she likes.

He sees the brother she’s talking to: his profile, his photo, his verification and the milestones. He reads her messages only if she chooses to share them, once a week, and never her photo or anyone she hasn’t started a conversation with.

Only if she chooses to share her conversations with him. Her profile says so before you start, the chat tells you the moment it begins, and he reads each week once it has ended. Nothing written before she chose is ever shared.

Yes. He can sign in from anywhere, see the brother, get an email at each milestone if she turns that on, and ask him to be verified at a mosque near him.

No. The conversation is hers, and the nikah is his to give, as it always was. He can ask the brother to get verified, review call requests if she asks him to, and speak to the brother if she allows it.

Any member can book a time with a registered mosque or centre, and we ask every brother to. Someone there meets them, in person or on a video call with their camera on, confirms who they are, asks five questions and speaks to one or two people who know them. Then they write a report. If you can’t make it, cancel at least 24 hours before.

That’s up to the centre: free, a donation or a fixed amount, paid to them. We take nothing, and you see the fee before you book.

There’s a setting for it. While Align is still small, we’ll relax it to find you more people, but only if you’ve said that’s fine. As more people join, it holds firm.

A verified badge means someone from a mosque met that member face to face, in person or on a video call. Numbers, links and usernames are blocked in chat, so nobody can move you to another app. Anything that feels wrong can be reported from the app, with the conversation attached.

No app can promise there’s nobody bad on it. Take the care you would with any stranger, and meet first at a centre or in a public place.

The centre’s answers about him and their remarks. It’s his: he shares it one introduction at a time and can take it back. She can ask for it, and so can her wali. Referees’ names and numbers never leave the centre.

Tell them, or tell us and we will. A centre registers for free, and there’s no subscription.

Either of you says so in the app, and the other is asked if they feel the same. Nothing’s agreed until you both say yes.

Yes. Once you’ve both said yes, either of you can book it at a community centre from your conversation. You both see it, her wali is told, and either of you can cancel it.

He can ask for it once you’ve both said yes, and not before. The booking itself is yours.

No. The centre and its imam do, as they always have. Align books it, tells everyone who needs to know, and steps back.

You’ll see the prices in the app before you pay. There are three plans: a month, three months or Lifetime, each in one payment, and a plan bought while one is running starts when it ends. You only need one to start a second conversation.

Changed your mind? A plan bought on our website is refunded in full within 14 days, as long as no conversation has started on it.

No. Verification fees, counselling and donations go straight to the centre, however the centre asks. Align never collects them.