Srinagar, Aug. 8 -- For more than four decades, political Islam was one of the Middle East's most influential political ideas. The 1979 Iranian Revolution inspired Islamist movements across the region, while organisations such as Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Tunisia's Ennahda and Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) argued that Islam should provide the foundation for politics and government. Scholars including John L. Esposito, Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy regarded the late twentieth century as the period in which political Islam emerged as one of the dominant ideological forces shaping Middle Eastern politics. When the Arab Spring erupted in 2011, many observers believed the region was entering an Islamist era through democratic e...