Egypt

[HoreTore]

I think that it's simply the character of the populations in those areas. Without a specially-advantaged secular opposition, all prospective representatives would be Islamists - they just wouldn't specially advertise themselves as such.

Wow.

In just two sentences, you managed to ignore the zillion different communist, socialist and nationalist political groups or revolutionaries who dominated the post-WW2 years. And such groups succeeded in gaining power in plenty of countries in that region. The baathists, the communists in Iran, the PKK, Gaffy and so on and so on. None of them religious, never mind islamist. Few of them had much outside support or special advantages. Indeed, seeing as many of them were each others mortal enemies, you could say they were heavily disadvantaged. The revolution in Iran was the first time a group like the commies(who were anti-religious hardliners) failed to gain control of a revolution in "that region". Heck, even the Shah in Afghanistan faced largely atheist opposition.

You could claim it's the times, but no way can you make the claim that it's the region.