QUES: These experiments in political Islam faltered during the 1990s: the Iranian revolution lost momentum, prestige, and public support, and Pakistan's rulers found that most of its population had little enthusiasm for fundamentalist Islam. Islamist revival movements gained followers across the Muslim world, but failed to secure political power except in Iran and Sudan. In Algeria, where in 1991 Islamists seemed almost certain to win power through the ballot box, the military preempted their victory, triggering a brutal civil war that continues today. Opponents of today's rulers have few, if any, ways to participate in the existing political system. They are thus a ready audience for calls to Muslims to purify their society, reject unwelcome modernization, and adhere strictly to the Sharia. Social and Economic Malaise In the 1970s and early 1980s, an unprecedented flood of wealth led the then largely unmodernized oil states to attempt to shortcut decades of development. They funded huge infrastructure projects, vastly expanded education, and created subsidized social welfare programs. These programs established a widespread feeling of entitlement without a corresponding sense of social obligations. By the late 1980s, diminishing oil revenues, the economic drain from many unprofitable development projects, and population growth made these entitlement programs unsustainable. The resulting cutbacks created enormous resentment among recipients who had come to see government largesse as their right. This resentment was further stoked by public understanding of how much oil income had gone straight into the pockets of the rulers, their friends, and their helpers. Unlike the oil states (or Afghanistan, where real economic development has barely begun), the other Arab nations and Pakistan once had seemed headed toward balanced modernization. The established commercial, financial, and industrial sectors in these states, supported by an entrepreneurial spirit and widespread understanding of free enterprise, augured well. But unprofitable heavy industry, state monopolies, and opaque bureaucracies slowly stifled growth. More importantly, these state-centered regimes placed their highest priority on preserving the elite's grip on national wealth. Unwilling to foster dynamic economies that could create jobs attractive to educated young men, the countries became economically stagnant and reliant on the safety valve of worker emigration either to the Arab oil states or to the West. Furthermore, the repression and isolation of women in many Muslim countries have not only seriously limited individual opportunity but also crippled overall economic productivity. By the 1990s, high birthrates and declining rates of infant mortality had produced a common problem throughout the Muslim world: a large, steadily increasing population of young men without any reasonable expectation of suitable or steady employment-a sure prescription for social turbulence.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: Which countries became economically stagnant and reliant on the safety valve of worker emigration?

QUES: Bin Laden reportedly discussed the planes operation with KSM and Atef in a series of meetings in the spring of 1999 at the al Matar complex near Kandahar. KSM's original concept of using one of the hijacked planes to make a media statement was scrapped, but Bin Laden considered the basic idea feasible. Bin Laden, Atef, and KSM developed an initial list of targets. These included the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center. According to KSM, Bin Laden wanted to destroy the White House and the Pentagon, KSM wanted to strike the World Trade Center, and all of them wanted to hit the Capitol. No one else was involved in the initial selection of targets. Bin Laden also soon selected four individuals to serve as suicide operatives: Khalid al Mihdhar, Nawaf al Hazmi, Khallad, and Abu Bara al Yemeni. During the al Matar meetings, Bin Laden told KSM that Mihdhar and Hazmi were so eager to participate in an operation against the United States that they had already obtained U.S. visas. KSM states that they had done so on their own after the suicide of their friend Azzam (Nashiri's cousin) in carrying out the Nairobi bombing. KSM had not met them. His only guidance from Bin Laden was that the two should eventually go to the United States for pilot training. Hazmi and Mihdhar were Saudi nationals, born in Mecca. Like the others in this initial group of selectees, they were already experienced mujahideen. They had traveled together to fight in Bosnia in a group that journeyed to the Balkans in 1995. By the time Hazmi and Mihdhar were assigned to the planes operation in early 1999, they had visited Afghanistan on several occasions. Khallad was another veteran mujahid, like much of his family. His father had been expelled from Yemen because of his extremist views. Khallad had grown up in Saudi Arabia, where his father knew Bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and Omar Abdel Rahman (the "Blind Sheikh").
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: Who did Bin Laden instruct KSM to send to the United States for pilot training?

QUES: Chinese Influences: The Japanese were forced out of the Korean peninsula in the sixth century, but not before the Koreans had bequeathed to the Yamato court copies of the sacred images and scriptures of Chinese Buddhism. Just as Christianity introduced Mediterranean culture into northern Europe, so Buddhism brought Chinese culture into Japanese society. Throughout the seventh and eighth centuries numerous Japanese monks, scholars, and artists made the perilous trip west across the Sea of Japan to study Chinese religion, history, music, literature, and paintinglater to be brought back for further development in Japan. An outstanding figure of this time was Prince Shotoku, who in 604 developed the "Seventeen-Article Constitution," outlining a code of human conduct and the ideals of state as a basic law for the nation. He also established relations with the Sui dynasty in China. Through him, the Japanese imperial court developed Chinese patterns of centralized government, with its formal bureaucracy of eight court ranks. The Chinese calendar was used to calculate the year of Japan's foundation by counting back the 1,260 years of the Chinese cosmological cycle. Thus, 660 b.c. is still the official date celebrated nationwide. At this early stage in its history Japan was already (for the most part) only nominally ruled by the emperor. De facto power was exercised by the militarily and economically strongest family. The Sogas had promoted Buddhism as an imperially sanctioned counterweight to the native Shinto religion, along with the new Chinese customs, to weaken the influence of their more conservative rivals. But they in turn were ousted in a.d. 645 by Nakatomi Kamatari, founder of the great Fujiwara clan, which was to rule Japanese affairs for hundreds of years and provide prominent advisers to the emperor even up to the 19th century.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION:
Who established relations with the Sui dynasty in China?