Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
Islam, the true religion of Allah, never allows cheating in any aspect of life. Muslims are people of morals, values, and ethics. Therefore, cheating in tests cannot be justified under any pretext. Muslims should be distinguished by their honesty, truthfulness, and fairness.
Answering your question, the late Sheikh Atiyya Saqr, former head of Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee, states:
It goes without saying that all kinds and forms of cheating are haram. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) has made this clear in the hadith: “He who cheats us does not belong to us.” (Muslim)
Anyone who cheats really commits a sin and he who helps him in cheating also shares in the blame. It’s to be stressed that toughness of tests does not justify cheating.
Cheating in tests is one of the things that threaten the society, for it urges the spread of falsehood and forms an attack against truth. It causes total chaos in the society and indicates that some people will have unjustified access to posts and honors.
A person who gets a job that requires certain marks which he has gained through cheating should know that the money he gains is haram. He may be of those whom are referred to in the verse that reads: {Think not that those who exult in what they have given, and love to be praised for what they have not done. Think not, they are in safety from the doom. A painful doom is theirs.} (Aal-Imran 3:188)
If you have performed some kind of work and exerted efforts that are not closely related to the qualifications, then you are entitled to the wage given to him in return of the efforts. What is beyond this is considered to be haram.
All in all, in your case you mentioned that one should pass many stages when applying to the internship from which is the online unsupervised test.
Moreover, you added that they know that the applicants may ask for help from others. But, to acquit yourself from the sin of cheating, you should tell them about the help you got from your friend in the online unsupervised test to give them the option to subject you to a supervised test or accept you as an intern relying on the result of the other stages of candidacy to the job.
Yet, the duty of Muslims is to steer clear of all forms of cheating, deceit, and dishonesty. By doing so, Allah, Most High, will grant them high degrees, both in this world and the world to come.
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.