Answer:
Islam had an extremely important political impact in the Middle East, and also in other areas in Central Asia, India, Pakistan, and some countries in southeast asia like Indonesia.
Explanation:
The reason is that Islam not only became the majority religion in these areas, but also became a political force in its own right.
This is because Islam worked as a force to motivate political change, and also because Islam became political: law became islamic, in the form of sharia law, and the boundaries between religion and state were blurred, so much that some countries of these areas are theocracies (ruled by a religious leader), for example, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The "Columbian Exchange" -- as historians call this transcontinental exchange of humans, animals, germs and plants -- affected more than just the Americas. In China, for example, the new era began when sailors reported the sudden appearance of Europeans in the Philippines in 1570. The astonishing thing about this was that they had come across the ocean from the east.
