Islamism had been quietly - well not that quietly, it's just that people in the West didn't notice - bubbling away and expanding for many decades prior to the 1970s.
Yeah the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had hundreds of thousands of members from the 1930s and were regularly attempting bombings and assassinations of the country’s leaders through to the 60s, Nasser having to suppress the organisation multiple times.
>muh West
Islam is fundamental to political legitimacy in Muslim societies. Anti-Western “secular” dictators like Saddam, Gaddafi, the Assads turned to it to bolster their regimes same as any ruler. Really the anomaly in the 20th century that deserves a question moreso than political Islamism is the appearance of socialist nationalism, which had never existed before in the Muslim word and withered rather quickly.
