Osama bin Laden’s humiliation frames: Giving meaning to emotions in Islamic fundamentalist narratives

Abstract

In this thesis, we aim to answer the following research question: How did Osama bin Laden frame the notion of humiliation (against Muslims) to legitimise terrorist action against the West during the late 90s and early 00s? To do so, we decompose the above puzzle and articulate the structure of this thesis by building upon its main components. First, we set up the analytical framework that will allow us to study Bin Laden’s message. We do that by briefly reflecting on how emotions have been traditionally addressed in social theory and by acknowledging the current definitions and trends. After that, we proceed to operationalise the concept of humiliation. we review the current state of knowledge on humiliation, which is mostly developed within social movements theory, to end up building our own definition of the term and breaking that definition down into three different dimensions: humiliation as a passive experience, humiliation as a proactive experience and humiliation as a “structure of meaning”. Focusing on the later, we transition to introduce the basics of framing theory and the three core framing tasks – diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framing. Once we have done that, we use our previously operationalised concept of humiliation to create the analytical tool (“humiliation frames”) that we will use to study how bin Laden develops the concept of humiliation into the construction of his narrative. This will enhance our understanding on how Bin laden framed humiliation in order to appeal to the “hearts and minds” of Muslims, mobilised them and legitimised violent action perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalist armed groups.