Legal Literacy – Bullying or bullying has recently become a prevalent issue in Indonesia. Not only among the community, actions that disturb and hurt others also massively occur within the scope of Islamic education.

This article discusses the phenomenon of bullying that often occurs in Islamic boarding schools and how Islamic law and criminal law view the case.

Understanding Behavior Bullying

Actions bullying or bullying can be defined as violence or oppression intentionally carried out by one person or a stronger group.

Juridically, acts of violence are explained in Article 1 number 16 of Law Number 35 of 2014, namely any act committed against a child that causes suffering or distress physically, psychologically, sexually, and/or neglect, including threats to commit acts, coercion, or unlawful deprivation of liberty.

Bullying events can occur in the home or family environment, schools, or the wider community. Bullying perpetrators are generally those who are popular figures and have power in the area or school. Meanwhile, victims are usually those who are more junior, lack self-confidence, are shy, quiet, and those who feel weak.

Types of Bullying

Antonius P.S. Wibowo through his book entitled “Application of Criminal Law in Handling Bullying in Schools” divides bullying actions into 3 types, namely:

(1) Bullying Physical

This type of bullying is characterized by physical contact between the perpetrator and the victim and can be seen with the naked eye.

Physical bullying generally includes pushing, kicking, pinching, hair pulling, slapping, scratching, hurting with objects, extortion, damaging other people's belongings, and so on.

(2) Bullying Verbal

This type of bullying is characterized by rude or unfavorable behavior towards someone through words or speech. This type of bullying can hurt others simply through words.

Some behaviors that are included in verbal bullying include yelling, threatening, insulting, cursing, demeaning, uttering harsh or dirty words to the victim, intimidating, spreading gossip, calling by names or terms that hurt the victim, and so on.

(3) Bullying Psychological

This type of bullying is divided into 2 categories, namely bullying direct non-verbal and bullying indirect non-verbal.

  • Direct Non-Verbal

This type of bullying is characterized by cynical and threatening looks or facial expressions towards the victim. In this case of bullying, it is generally accompanied by physical and verbal bullying.

  • Indirect Non-Verbal

This type of bullying is characterized by the behavior of silencing the victim, ostracizing, ignoring, slandering, terrorizing, intimidating, and mocking through social media.

In addition to the bullying mentioned above, there are 2 other types of bullying put forward by McCulloch and Barbara, namely: