Abstract:
This study aims to elucidate the relationship between children's educational rights and educational justice in Islamic jurisprudence. It examines the jurisprudential and hadith-based foundations of children's rights and seeks to demonstrate that children's educational rights constitute the practical manifestation of educational justice, and that educational justice cannot be realized without safeguarding these rights. The research employs an analytical-ijtihādī method, drawing upon jurisprudential sources, hadith literature, and works in the field of Islamic educational jurisprudence.
The findings indicate that, within the Islamic educational framework, the child is recognized as a rights-bearing individual endowed with both fundamental and developmental educational rights. In a novel classification proposed by this study, developmental rights are further categorized into primary, general, and specific rights. The specific rights encompass the religious, moral, intellectual, emotional, social, sexual, and physical dimensions of the child's development. Parents bear a religious obligation to secure these rights, and child-rearing is structured around them as normative criteria of educational justice. Furthermore, educational justice in Islamic jurisprudence extends beyond formal equality and is grounded in due entitlement, developmental needs, and the inherent human dignity of the child. Consequently, discriminatory or degrading parental practices, in addition to their psychological consequences, constitute both injustice (ẓulm) and a violation of the child's educational rights.
This approach establishes a coherent and systematic relationship among Islamic jurisprudence, children's rights, and educational justice, thereby providing a conceptual foundation for the further development of Islamic family educational jurisprudence as a distinct field of study.