It's actually quite common in the Arab countries to have such confusion regarding age: utter mess with documentation, no regular census (the last one in Lebanon was conducted before WWII) , mistaken identity or, simply speaking, people not knowing their birth date. For example I've heard about cases in Syria when a man is called up for a draft just to turn out they called a five years old or 70 years old. My Syrian professor had two birth dates, but he was lucky it was the same year.
That being said, the freaking judge could see they brought him a four-years old. WTF dude?
I guess Lebanon is different case and no one important want to conduct census because of fragile political system based on sectarianism. Was previous attempt to chose the president 20th time when they wanted to to this? 30?
That is correct. The last census was allowed by the Maronite government when they still had a majority. Naturally, proportions had switched significantly in favor of the Muslim population since then. No one wants to upset the power-sharing agreement (President is always a Maronite, Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, Speaker of the Parliament a Shia, etc.), since I reckon it wouldn't be difficult to conduct a census in Lebanon.
In states like Egypt, where you don't have Lebanese-style situation, in addtion to factors I've mentioned before, many people simply bother to register birth of their children.
A little, but that's not really why we do the propping. The reasons are several, at least in my opinion....
1.to keep the men with beards away from Army
Middle Eastern politics is indeed funny. Sisi is basically a Saudi/Gulf Emirates toyboy. The Gulf countries does very little to prevent their citizens from financing ISIS, but they highly dislike Muslim Brotherhood.
