On Sept. 9, a mother traveling home late with her children ran out of fuel. She stopped her car and called a relative. She also called the motorway police, which refused to respond to her as she was located out of their “jurisdiction”. While she was waiting, two men appeared and began attacking her car, breaking open the windows. These men took her out of her car and raped her multiple times in front of her children, before robbing her of valuables and cash and making a run for it. One of the suspects has been arrested as he confessed his crime.

This is not the only rape case this year which has made the headlines. In August, a female lawyer, Irshad Nasreen, was abducted and gang-raped by three men for four days before being found. Earlier in September, 5-year-old Marwah was kidnapped, raped, murdered and thrown into a pile of garbage in Karachi.

Perhaps it is the culmination of these bone-chilling incidents that has finally resulted in a conversation being stirred up in the country with regards to sexual assault and its punishment. There has been a large public outcry, particularly since the motorway incident, championing the rights of women, and the protection of their bodies and lives.

One peculiar shade these protests have taken is the demand for public hangings of rapists in Pakistan. To put it plainly, this would not achieve anything apart from satisfying the thirst for violence for those demanding it.

Publicly hanging rapists would not help the women of Pakistan, first and foremost, because of its redundancy in the legal sense. The conviction rate for rape and domestic violence cases is about two percent. If the judiciary cannot even convict rapists, why should its punishment matter? Legal experts have already commented on this issue when the ruling was given earlier this February that those convicted of child sexual abuse are to be publicly hanged. They said that there is no correlation between public hangings and deterrence of the crime and that all this would achieve is the continuation of the circle of violence the country is spiraling into.

Moreover, several studies have, in fact, shown the lack of correlation between public execution and crime, and Pakistan is no exception. With such horrifying conviction rates, should the focus be on the punishment itself or whether the perpetrator is actually caught and the victim provided justice? Moreover, how will the victims be given justice if cases are not even being reported? Due to factors owing to social, cultural or religious barriers, women who have experienced sexual assault stay silent. The percentage of Pakistani women experiencing sexual violence in public places during their lifetime would not be 93 percent. Putting aside the stigma of sexual assault which deters many from reporting cases, a poignant reason for lack of reporting is the law itself.

The Hudood Ordinances were enacted in 1979 during the presidency of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in order to criminalize adultery and non-marital sex. However, the issue of consent was ignored, so that the “punishment” for both consensual and nonconsensual sex became the same, putting victims of sexual assault or rape in a very difficult position. Furthermore, the Islamic requirement of having four witnesses to prove adultery also became applicable to rape cases, making conviction even more difficult.

Islamic laws, on which Zia-ul-Haq was seemingly trying to base his laws, could not be more different from this. Islamic law recognizes rape as being separate from consensual sex and punishes rapists while protecting the women. For instance, at least two Quranic verses state that someone who is coerced into an activity is innocent of any wrongdoing. Moreover, there is an incident from the life of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, in which a woman came to him to tell him a man had raped her. Her word was taken, the man captured, and upon confession, stoned to death. If Zia-ul-Haq was truly following the Islamic way, he would not have made the error which resulted in decades of fear, silence and injustice, which still exist today as the residue of the Hudood Ordinances, although now altered, continue to rot the country.

Leaving aside the legal arguments, public hangings would not result in any positive change in society. It is an instrument of controlling through fear, but does this fear even work? Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has announced that those convicted of rape will be chemically castrated, supposedly so that they “cannot do anything in the future”. In response to this, one could only ask the prime minister, would years and years of misogyny and cruel treatment of women be erased by these surgeries? Would mindsets be changed? Would the urge to inflict terror and pain also go away? Would women feel any safer walking outside alone than they do now? Would people stop telling women not to go out unless they have a man to protect and accompany them? I do not think so.

It is not a change in punishment that will protect the women, children and men of the country. The collective consciousness of society is saturated with ideas and beliefs so venomous that it will still take decades to change. Still, there can always be a start to this process. Women must be seen as just that: women, not mothers or daughters or sisters. Human beings, not objects existing in relation to men. Whether this is taught in schools, at homes, through media, through political voices and so on, change must begin somewhere. Being a country heavily entrenched in religion, religious leaders have the power and sway to change mindsets as well. The only question is, will they? And lastly, will a day come where I can safely walk the streets of Islamabad after sunset, alone?