Religion easiest hiding place for ignorance, by Stephanie Shaakaa

They Build Cages and Call Them Commandments.

You told your wife not to work because your religion forbids it. You said a woman’s place is in the kitchen, that her duty is to raise children and obey her husband. Yet when she went into labour, you rushed her to the hospital and demanded a female doctor  because suddenly, your faith wouldn’t allow a man to see her body.

If every man thought like you, which female doctor would have been there that night?

If all husbands locked their wives at home in the name of religion, which nurse would deliver your baby?

Which teacher would stand in your daughter’s classroom?

Religion is not your problem. Your problem is orientation,warped, shallow, and proudly hypocritical.

We have built a culture that glorifies control and baptises it as faith. We tell women that silence is virtue, dependence is holy, obedience is their only path to heaven. Yet when crisis comes, we lean on the very women we kept under. You forbid your wife to work, but still expect her to help with bills. You mock women who chase degrees, yet you want your children taught by women who did.You cannot despise what you depend on.

Religion has become the easiest hiding place for ignorance. It’s what people grab when logic slips from their hands. But faith, in its purest form, uplifts it disciplines, it refines, it dignifies. What many practice today is not faith it’s fear. Fear of equality. Fear of change. Fear that a woman’s light might outshine their shadow. And so, they build cages and call them commandments.

If it were truly about God, they would remember that every faith tradition honours women as thinkers, builders, and partners in destiny. Khadijah was a businesswoman. Deborah was a judge and leader in battle. Mary carried grace on her shoulders, not silence in her mouth. History bears witness too.The world’s first university was founded by a woman Fatima al-Fihri centuries before anyone coined the word feminism.

Aisha dreamed of becoming a nurse. Her exams were perfect,her heart was ready to heal. But her father said education would make her too independent, and her husband agreed. She folded her dreams, hid them in a drawer, and watched life pass by. Years later, when her own child fell gravely ill, she had to watch another woman trained, free, and unafraid save her baby. She clutched her chest, tears burning, and whispered a prayer she had never allowed herself to say. This would have been me.

So when you demand a female doctor, remember she exists because someone else believed in a woman. When you need a nurse, remember her father didn’t clip her wings. When your daughter excels in school, thank the woman who stood before her as a teacher because her husband didn’t hide behind scripture to cage her.

It’s time to stop using religion as a cover for insecurity. A confident man doesn’t fear a woman’s growth, he celebrates it.When she rises, the home rises too. Leadership is not domination,it is partnership.

The tragedy is that too many men mistake power for purpose. They want submission without responsibility. Authority without empathy. Respect without character. Faith without wisdom becomes fanaticism. And a society that silences its women silences its own progress.

Every time you suppress a woman, you weaken a generation. You deny a child a teacher, a patient a healer, a nation a builder. You think you are protecting religion, but what you are really protecting is your own fear. The world does not crumble because women stand up,it crumbles because men refuse to evolve.

Religion was never meant to be a weapon, it was meant to be light.Light doesn’t blind, it reveals. It shows us that faith and freedom can coexist, that obedience should never mean invisibility, and that piety should never silence purpose.

So next time you stop your wife from working, remember your hypocrisy may one day leave you stranded. Because when she’s in the hospital and there is no female doctor, maybe then you’ll finally realise it wasn’t religion that failed you.It was your ignorance.

Faith without wisdom becomes fanaticism.

A confident man doesn’t fear a woman’s growth, he celebrates it.

Religion is not your issue. You are simply wrongly oriented.

You cannot despise what you depend on.They build cages and call them commandments.

Vanguard News

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