The Protection of Teachers’ Rights in Indonesia: A Comparative Analysis of Islamic Law and Positive Law

Abstract

Indonesian law guarantees teachers income, professional development, and protection in the exercise of their duties, yet the guarantees are distributed unequally among civil servant teachers, contract teachers, and those employed by private and madrasah foundations, and the protection of teachers against criminalisation for ordinary disciplinary acts remains contested. Islamic legal doctrine developed a detailed body of rules on remuneration for teaching and on the standing of the teacher that Indonesian scholarship rarely brings into legal analysis. This study compares the protection of teachers’ rights under Islamic law and Indonesian positive law, identifies the gaps between guarantee and realisation, and formulates proposals for the codification of education legislation now before the legislature. The research is normative juridical and doctrinal, using statutory, conceptual, and comparative approaches, with classical doctrine on hire and wages and maqasid reasoning as internal normative standards. The two systems converge on the entitlement to remuneration, its timeliness, and the teacher’s standing, and diverge in institutional form rather than in principle. Three gaps persist in Indonesian practice: unequal treatment of teachers outside civil service status, the weakness of professional protection against criminal process, and delay in the payment of entitlements. Islamic doctrine on the timeliness of wages and on the employer’s liability speaks directly to the third and is legally usable rather than merely hortatory. The codification should equalise core entitlements by function rather than by employment status, state professional protection in operative terms, and attach consequences to delay in payment.