What is the ruling on concealing the number of children from those who ask?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : Honorable Shaykh, a woman says that she has eight sons and eight daughters, and people ask her about the number of her children, and she hides it from them. Is there any harm in that?
The Shaykh : We must know why she is hiding it. Is she afraid of the evil eye? We tell her to rely on Allah the Exalted and not to be fearful of the evil eye, for the one who fears the evil eye may be afflicted by it. If she is hiding their number for one of the reasons, there is no blame on her, but there must be a figurative interpretation (ta'wil). So what if they are eight? She says, "My children are four," meaning the older ones, for example, or the girls among them, or the males, as long as there are four males and four females. The important thing is that she must use a figurative interpretation so that her speech is not lying.
The presenter : May Allah reward you with good.
The Shaykh : I advise my Muslim brothers regarding this matter to ask, "How many children do you have? How is your livelihood?" because this is meddling in what does not concern them, and part of the excellence of a person's Islam is leaving what does not concern him, except for a man who asks this question in order to give them from charity or donations, in which case there is no harm. Otherwise, he has no business with people's children, whether they are many or few. Yes.
The presenter : May Allah reward you with good,
The Shaykh : We must know why she is hiding it. Is she afraid of the evil eye? We tell her to rely on Allah the Exalted and not to be fearful of the evil eye, for the one who fears the evil eye may be afflicted by it. If she is hiding their number for one of the reasons, there is no blame on her, but there must be a figurative interpretation (ta'wil). So what if they are eight? She says, "My children are four," meaning the older ones, for example, or the girls among them, or the males, as long as there are four males and four females. The important thing is that she must use a figurative interpretation so that her speech is not lying.
The presenter : May Allah reward you with good.
The Shaykh : I advise my Muslim brothers regarding this matter to ask, "How many children do you have? How is your livelihood?" because this is meddling in what does not concern them, and part of the excellence of a person's Islam is leaving what does not concern him, except for a man who asks this question in order to give them from charity or donations, in which case there is no harm. Otherwise, he has no business with people's children, whether they are many or few. Yes.
The presenter : May Allah reward you with good,
Source
ابن العثيمين - فتاوى على الهاتف - فتاوى الصيام — archive.org (42:02)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.