Actually it was religion (Christianity was famous for this) that kept people believing that the Earth was flat and at the center of the Solar System.

 

I agree that the Middle East is full of people that don't hold to science. There is a reason we don't have advances coming out of that region.

 

That line of reasoning is a favourite among those who advocate pseudo-science (homeopathy, "moon landing hoax" theories, etc) - so it's certainly not surprising to see it used to advocate creationism.

 

In a nutshell: "The theories of Copernicus, Newton, Gallileo, etc, were originally ridiculed, and later turned out to be correct. My theories are also widely ridiculed - so my theories must be correct too!" Or in other words, an example of the fallacy of "virtue by assocation" (as opposed to "guilt by association"), confirmation bias, correlation confused with cause, and blind anti-populism - all rolled into one.

 

Unlike creationism, the theories of Copernicus had one really important benefit: they were actually correct. His theories did a better job of explaining existing empirical data - and they made testable predictions that turned out to be accurate.