A person is not expected to silently bear and bite his lips whilst an offender is causing harm to his person, his loved ones or his property. Everyone oof us has the right of defence to his person and his property.
This right is enshrined in our Penal Code. It is there to allow us to stop harm being done to ourselves, our loved ones and our property. If someone punches us we have a right to stop his punches and to retaliate so as to prevent being further harmed. This right does not extend to punishing an offender - for that is the duty of the court. What we oftentimes read in the papers is thiefs being assaulted by those arresting him to 'teach him a lesson' for committing the offence. This is not exercising the right of defence as the fear of harm had passed when the thief is caught. The persons arresting the thief are themselves committing an offence.
The underlying principle of this right is that of 'reasonableness'. Firstly it must be reasonable to exerrcise the right - ie there must be a harm that this right is intended to prevent and secondly one cannot use more harm than is necessary to prevent the harm that is feared. Thus this right does not entitle your to shoot someone who steals your car.
The right of defence surfaces when one is discussing criminal law, however the same right exist and is acted upon on a regular basis outside of criminal law. When you are defamed, or your copyright is infringed or someone is spreading lies about you which will affect your business or employment, you have the right to go to court to stop this harm from happening or continuing. This is usually not viewed as exercising the right of defence, but essentially it is.
Justice dictates not only that there is a right of defence but that everyone be given the opportunity to defend himself. The opportunity is given in a criminal matter when an accused is brought to court and he is given the opportunity to know the accusations and evidence against him so that he can fully defend himself. When someone defame another, the person defame can take the former to court where there are mechanism in place to allow him to know the full extant of the lies that had been spread about him and to give his version of events.
However what has caused me some concern is when a third party had acted upon the lies spread about you, whilst you may have caused of action against the person who spread the lies, this would be of no consequence if a third person, especially if he is your employer, had acted upon the lies. If your employer acting upon what another employee had said about you, had terminated you or transferred you to a dead end job, provided the employer had acted properly in following procedures, there is not much you can do about this.
In Islam, these lies are labelled as 'fitnah' and is is said that spreading 'fitnahs' is worse than eating the carcass of your friend. It is also called upon everyone to afford an opportunity to those affected to know what is being said of them and to hear their explanation or defence to this accusation. This is what justice dictates. Unfortunately this is not reality, there are too many who will throw the proverbial stone and hid their hands thereafter.
