In this day and age, it seems to be. That's what matters. We're not talking about a thousand years ago, when most people wouldn't venture outside of their own region and most people in the world couldn't read. We're talking about the year 2015 (or, in the islamic calendar, 1436). Men have walked on the moon. We've started to explore the deepest reaches of our oceans with unmanned vehicles. We can see our own planet using cameras in space. Ordinary people can look up millions upon millions of historical documents without leaving their desk. We are in the early stages of turning people into cyborgs. Then why does one specific religious group still adhere very strongly to superstitions? Why do we still have relatively important scholars in one part of the world arguing for geocentrism?
I live in an area where nearly every household has at least one car, and a flat-screen television, and several smartphones. Where internet speeds are among the highest in the world. Where you can't travel by car for more than one hour without coming across a university. And yet we have Muslims who hide mentally ill children from health care professionals because they've chosen to put their faith in exorcisms. We have about one quarter of marriages in our two largest Muslim groups taking place between cousins. We have demands from Muslims that paintings and advertisements in public places be taken down because they are offensive for featuring nudity, pigs or dogs. Some time ago, a public broadcaster had to edit a popular children's cartoon about puppies because it appeared as though the Arabic word for 'Allah' appeared as a fish grate in a pile of garbage. What is deplorable is that self-proclaimed progressives are cheering on regression. In the 1970s, a political party put up a poster featuring full, frontal female nudity. A year ago, perhaps two, an advertisement was covered up with garbage bags and a note saying 'there is no god but Allah, and Muhammed is his messenger' because it featured too much leg.
