In the Middle Ages in England the underpinning cultural and social values were not that much different from those in Middle Eastern countries just a hundred years ago. Modern communications and technology have accelerated tribal and cultural change and in many respects it's a natural extension of the Industrial Revolution.
Only 50 years ago there were still cargo cults in the Melanesian Islands worshipping white-faced idols because they thought that the French rubber planters who had metal tools, mirrors and aeroplanes had the secret for communicating with the ancestors.
100 years ago the Middle East was largely populated by nomadic tribes to whom the British decided to give land and turn the bigger tribes into royal families in return for oil rights.
From living in tents, traveling the trading routes and warring over women, water and camels or eeking out a stone age agrarian living in the foothills of the Himalayas to having access to TV, modern weaponry, in some cases wealth and exposure to decadence on a previously unimaginable scale in the space a two or three generations is an incredible journey - a journey that took hundreds of years in the west.
In England it took a civil war to wrest the power away from the King, revolutions, demographic reprofiling, establishment of Parliament and an Industrial working class, social reform, multiple wars, suffrage, technological advance, economic revolution and a whole bunch of other stuff over several hundred years to reshape our culture and values into what they are today.
Societal rules and culture develop to support the community in their natural environment and in some historical environments there was a logic to e.g. women covering up in public especially where there is lawlessness and can't always be protected from kidnap or rape which is how it became adopted into the cultural value system.
Our Western values changes and evolved over a very long period of time as we moved from a agrarian serf (slave?) based society through industrial to technological.
But in those societies in the Middle East, parts of Asia, Africa and S America where modernity has been thrust upon them over no more than a handful of generations at the most it will take a very long time before culture and societal values catch up.
And whilst that's the case, those seeking power will always be able to justify their actions on the basis of culture and values and do it in the name of religion - the ultimate persuasion because it is a reflection of societal values and culture.
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