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Can he lie about his age in order to get a pension?

29-09-2006

Question 91484

I want to retire from my job with a government-owned company, but I am a few years too young to retire, which means I cannot retire now. But I see some of my colleagues who are the same age as me or younger, and they go to the governmental medical committee and ask them to re-evaluate their ages, and in most cases they get an official agreement to alter their ages between two to seven years. Then their ages are altered in the company files according to the instructions from the civil records department, based on the re-evaluation referred to. I think that doing something like this is haraam because most of those who do it are certain of how old they are before they ask for this re-evaluation, but they do this in order to get retirement. Is it haraam if I go to the official concerned and tell him the reason, and ask him to do issue instruction to show my age as older, without having to refer to this medical committee and to regard this action of that official as a favour so that I can  show the new documents to the government and retire?.

Answer

Praise be to Allah.

So long as a person knows what his age is, he has no right to tell anyone anything different, whether he is the one who says it or it is done via a committee or official. None of that is permissible, because it is lying. 

If the official wants to help you to retire, based on reasons that you have, there is nothing wrong with that, so long as it does not involve any lying about your age. 

And Allaah knows best.

Bad behaviour
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