Performing the salat [Islamic prayers] at work: Secular and pious Muslims negotiating the contours of the public in Belgium

Belgium: Methodological contextualization

Contrary to its neighbouring country France, Belgium is not characterized by a unified secular model. It is rather constituted by various, conflicting ideological perspectives: some people adhere to the principle of laïcité while others defend a more pluralistic conception of the public sphere. The Belgian juridical principle of neutrality, which is constitutionally guaranteed, is composed of two central principles. The first principle is that of separation, which limits any state intervention in the operations of the cult and vice versa. This principle is intimately tied with the second principle by which the state actively recognizes a number of cults, granting them the funding and the right to independently manage their buildings and personnel without any state intervention. ⁹ As of today, there are seven recognized cults (Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, secular denomination, Judaism and Islam). While the principle of neutrality reflects the state’s commitment to remaining distant from religious expressions, the institutional landscape of the country is still organized according to a number of ideological divisions: Catholic, liberal and socialist. ¹⁰ Despite this plural institutional legacy, however, the public expressions of Islamic practices and identities remain a sensitive issue. While no uniform regulations exist on the question of veiling (with the exception of the Flemish public schools since September 2009), most schools and employers prohibit the hijab in their schools or at the workplace. Belgium was also one of the first countries to institute a general ban on the face veil, in July 2011. The ideas that these practices are oppressive and sexist have figured prominently in arguments to defend such a ban, yet other, interrelated, principles have equally informed such exclusions. The first one concerns the notion of integration and maintains that minorities should adapt to the dominant culture. A second important principle is that of strict neutrality, which resonates with the French principle of laïcité. It asserts that individuals should refrain from displaying any form of religious attachments in public settings such as schools or administrations. While the first principle is strongly represented in Flanders, a region that increasingly defines itself as culturally homogeneous and that expresses growing nationalist aspirations, the second principle prevails among left-wing circles and francophone regions. Both principles, however, inform large parts of political life and cut across the left-wing and conservative–nationalist political spectrum. ¹¹

The presence of the Maghrebi community, of which Moroccans represent the largest group, largely dates from the post-war bilateral agreements between the Belgian state and Morocco (1964), Algeria (1969) and Tunisia (1969) to recruit low-skilled workers for the coal, car and steel industries. While no exact figures exist on the size of this community, individuals of Moroccan origin represent the largest non-EU minority in Belgium and are estimated at 220,000 to 350,000, thus forming the largest group within the broader Muslim community estimated at 500,000 to 600,000 (Kanmaz and Battui, 2004). ¹² The presence of this minority is unequally spread across the country, with a large portion in Brussels followed by Antwerp and Liège. As in several other western European countries, this group represents the lowest socioeconomic stratum, with poverty levels attaining 50 percent, school drop-out levels reaching 63 percent and unemployment statistics three times higher than the national average (around 29% and 38%) (Van Robaeys et al., 2007; Jacobs et al., 2009). The interviews analysed here draw on fieldwork that was conducted between 2003 and 2006 and in 2008 among Islamic and sociocultural Maghrebi organizations in Antwerp and Belgium. During those years, I actively took part in meetings, seminars and gatherings of various groups, and I conducted 65 in-depth and open-ended interviews with 22 men and 43 women whom I recruited either directly during the activities or through snowball sampling. ¹³ The respondents all lived in the cities of Brussels (Capital Region) or Antwerp, and they were, or had been, involved in sociocultural and Islamic organizations. In analysing their accounts, I aim not only to understand how they position themselves in relation the question of praying at the workplace, but also to uncover the discursive repertoires that they invoke to justify their positions. These repertoires, I will demonstrate, not only constitute the idea of religion in a particular way but also the idea of the public.

Establishing a private/public dichotomy

Faith had never really been part of Yassine’s life, a middle-aged man of Moroccan origin who lives in Brussels and works in public administration. ¹⁴ He remembers how, as a child, he had difficulties accepting the different religious ‘dogmas’ he grew up with, and he quickly distanced himself from all these religious convictions. This also resulted in a strong secular stance toward public expressions of religion. Yassine’s account offers a good illustration of the different mechanisms at play in a perspective that problematizes the presence of religion in public. The notions of public and private are established on contrasting grounds and represented as different ontological realms that fulfill different functions in society. A homology is established between the categories religion and private, and they are then linked with other concepts such as home, church, synagogue or mosque. As such, religion is primarily located in the realm of the domestic and the religious institution, dislocated from the public realm. The idea of the public becomes, on the other hand, a sphere that protects individuals from any form of compulsion – an idea that is forcefully conveyed in the liberal tradition through the notion of negative freedom (Berlin,1969[1958]). Talal Asad notes how this construction of the public as a space free from any religious intervention draws on a particular understanding of objective, public debate. Religious argumentation lacks the necessary objectivity that would enable its inclusion in a dispassionate and disinterested public space. This construction of public space, Asad reminds us, reaches back to the Kantian exclusion of religious beliefs from this realm (Asad, 2003: 204–205). ¹⁵ Yet Yassine’s account is primarily centered around the idea that religion necessarily operates in an ‘invasive’ way, a characteristic that compels its enclosure within the private sphere. Yassine’s characterization of religion strongly resonates with French conceptions of laïcité and religion that have strongly influenced the Belgian secular tradition: when religion interferes in public life, it is perceived as ostentatious and it is seen as competing illegitimately with the authority of the state in defining the common good (Bowen, 2008: 160). Privatization becomes, therefore, not only a social principle that guarantees the establishment of a common ground, but also a principle that protects individuals from the invasive power of religion.

Yassine was not the only one to oppose the performance of religious practices in public spaces. Faiza, a woman in her 40 s who worked as a legal adviser in Brussels, held similar viewpoints. Raised in a home where she saw members of her family (especially her mother) slide into political Islam after the Iranian Revolution, she understood her atheist convictions to be partially a reaction to those developments. While she opposed the headscarf ban in Belgian institutions, she remained a strong defender of the French model of laïcité and was therefore not generally supportive of religious expression in public life such as the performance of ş alat at work:

Faiza: No, that annoys me. Honestly … It’s like with Ramadan; nobody has asked you to do it. We are in a system that operates in a specific way. You should be able to deal with it. It’s really that, actually eh … yes, I am for a modest practice. I am for a modest practice …

Faiza and Yassine’s line of argumentation illustrates what Tariq Modood (1998) has framed as a radical secularist standpoint: the public presence of religion is invasive and its circumscription to the private is a necessary condition for achieving individual freedom. Most interlocutors, however, did not share the same position as Faiza or Yassine but held a more flexible understanding of this question. They did not simply abandon the idea of privatization, but instead articulated a different version of it that was not realized through the exclusion of religion from the public but rather through the conditioned regulation of religion.

Negotiating salat as a ‘right’

Hassan is a middle-aged man of Moroccan background and a non-practising Muslim who has been a lifelong activist, first in various civil organizations, and later, at the time of our interview, as a member of the Federal Parliament. Contrary to the positions observed in the previous cases, Hassan was open to the idea that Muslims could pray at work. Yet his sympathy for this position did not imply a rejection of the privatization of religion. In the last sentence of this passage, he notes that ‘religious practices need to be maintained in the private sphere’, reiterating the central idea of separation between the public and the private. The difference from the cases observed earlier (i.e. Faiza and Yassine) lies in the idea of negotiation, a category on which Hassan repeatedly insisted during our conversation: ‘Negotiations have really been inscribed in the, in the foundations … You negotiate with the state, you negotiate with enterprises, you negotiate with school-representatives, you negotiate with the clergy, you negotiate […] while we, very often, tend to claim things [revendications].’ The concept of negotiation first describes a political rationality that is central to Belgian (and Dutch) political life: institutional, regional and ideological cleavages should be primarily solved through deliberation and accommodation (see Huyse, 1970; Lijphart, 1982[1968]). More than simply referring to a specific political rationality, this idea of negotiation as articulated here is also mobilized in contrast with the notion of imposition. Negotiation, in Hassan’s words, does not refer to the search for common ground between two parties who defend their particular interests in shared terms. For him it primarily refers to the employer’s authorization of such practices. Consequently, a different understanding of privatization is introduced here: it does not exclude the possibility of religious expression in public life, but it rather regulates the conditions under which these can be expressed.

Stuart Hall notes in his seminal essay ‘Encoding/Decoding’ (1980[1973]) that negotiated positions are characterized by an acknowledgement of the hegemonic code while simultaneously opening up the space for alternative articulations: ‘It accords the privileged position to the dominant definitions of events, while reserving the right to make a more negotiated application to “local conditions”, to its own more corporate positions’ (Hall, 1980[1973]). Rather than disrupting the dominant power structures, negotiated positions thus create new spaces of articulation while re-enacting the dominant power structures. They include potentially subversive particularities without posing a threat to the operational logic of the dominant positions. Hassan’s defence of negotiated positions was by no means unique; several other interviewees similarly employed this framework. Hanane, for example, a non-practising administrative employee from Antwerp, was open to the idea of praying at work, but she insisted that such arrangements should be a established through ‘diplomacy’, – as she put it – ‘rather than through forceful demands’. Amina, a pious Muslim woman in her 20 s, similarly placed herself in a position of negotiation. She worked for a multinational company in Brussels and continuously sought ways to combine her orthodox Islamic practice with her professional activities. While she was reticent to ask to pray during working hours, her religious practices occasionally conflicted with her professional responsibilities. This was especially the case when Ramadan fell in winter, and she was obliged to end iftar (a day of fasting) during working hours ¹⁷ or to leave work earlier for the taraweeh prayers. In the following passage, she explains how she tried to manage these conflicts:

Amina: When you are in a meeting you are in a meeting. You will not say: I have to eat, I’m fasting and everything. But it’s clear that I have never been restrained from taking [my iftar]. Even during a meeting with franchisers, I mean, in a very natural way, I would take a piece of bread and a date, and have it while the meeting is continuing.

In the first two sentences, Amina reproduces the idea that religion is a private matter: this privatization is constituted here through the reassertion of the workplace (i.e. the meeting) as a social domain that should be exempt from religious intrusions. A ‘meeting’ does not refer to a physical environment (as it did in Yassine’s case, i.e. home, the synagogue or the church) but rather describes a set of practices specific to this setting that cannot be temporarily suspended for religious reasons. At the same time, though, Amina does attempt to negotiate certain unavoidable religious ‘interventions’ such as the breaking of the fast. Significantly, she qualifies these interventions by saying that she does them in a ‘natural way’. ‘Natural’ refers here to a behavior that passes unnoticed in a particular setting despite its potentially transgressive – its religious – character. Amina, in other words, negotiates this practice by downplaying its religious distinctiveness and assimilating it to the secular rhythm and habits of the workplace. Such a position reminds us of the ‘tactics’ that Michel de Certeau describes in his seminal work, The Practice of Everyday Life. He differentiates tactics from strategies through their capacity to remain invisible, to operate in ‘isolated actions’ and to make use of the opportunities within the reigning power structures (1984: 37).

So far we have explored one set of arguments expressed by Hassan and the others: that of negotiation. Hassan’s position towards praying at the workplace was, however, also substantiated by a second rationale – that of rights: ‘There is the recognition of religion; there is the recognition of the expression of these religions, even in public. It is the European convention of Human Rights which says that; Belgium does not say anything else.’ Framing prayer at the workplace as a right mobilizes a discursive and symbolic repertoire that presents this practice as an individual entitlement, a repertoire that is central to liberal societies. The language of rights prevailed among my respondents, whether it concerned the question of praying at the workplace or other religious practices such as veiling. Zakia, a woman in her 30 s who worked as a translator for the EU and was involved in Sufi spirituality, referred to Belgian labour regulations: ‘In the Belgian labour law, there is an article which tells you that, ehm … the employer ehm  … the employer should give some moment to his employee to fulfil his cultural duties. That’s written in the labour law.’ Similarly, Amina framed the right to pray at the workplace as a human right:

Amina: “Ah non!”, I have never asked my boss, although I have just recently found out that this right is granted by the European Convention of Human Rights, which guarantees the right to practice one’s religion at work, and praying is part of religion. This is not bad at all, I think, if I would have known.

Despite the central importance she accords to praying (on time), Amina explains here that she only considered fulfilling this duty at work after discovering its inclusion in the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). More than simply pointing out the central importance of the human rights discourse in these justifications of the practice, I wish to note particularly how this invocation of a rights-based discourse also conditions the type of claims that can be made. In other words, such a rights-based narrative not only facilitates the articulation of particular claims, but it actually figures as a precondition for the consideration of certain claims by the individuals themselves. It is indeed telling that Amina only considered this idea of praying at work after discovering its inclusion in the ECHR. Her words illustrate the formative power of the contemporary rights-based discourse. It not only functions as one of the most powerful languages through which certain claims are made in modern, liberal societies, but it also actively shapes moral and political subjectivities in particular ways. It is a discourse that conditions both the kinds of claims that can be made and even imagined in the first place. Amina’s account, I am arguing, invites us to explore the ways in which human rights language – understood as a discourse and an ethics – shapes our political imaginary and political subjectivity.

This observation resonates with a theoretical perspective that examines how liberalism and its juridical correlate, human rights, operate as structures of power that shape and condition one’s religious or ethical agency in a particular manner. ¹⁸ Wendy Brown succinctly articulates this active quality of human rights discourse: ‘in its very promise to protect the individual against suffering and permit choice for individuals, human rights discourse produces a certain kind of subject in need of a certain kind of protection’ (Brown, 2004: 135). Human rights discourse has clearly emerged as a preferred language in a number of other cases such as the hijab controversy. Muslim and non-Muslim women (and men) primarily drew on this language to oppose the various bans that had been installed in the country and in the Flemish public schools since September 2009. ¹⁹ Organizations such as BOEH! (Baas Over Eigen Hoofd! (Boss Over One’s Own Head!)), a feminist collective of Muslim and non-Muslim women and Vrije Keuze (Free Choice), an organization of the parents of the excluded students, both challenged the ban with reference to the women’s ‘religious freedom’ or ‘right to choose’. Muslim organizations such as De Leidraad (The Guideline) insisted upon the hijab as a religious prescription, and, consequently, were significantly less influential in the political debates. In the similar debates around prayer at work, it is neither accidental nor incidental that these individuals primarily rely upon this rights-based discourse. Rather, it illustrates the pervasiveness of this discourse, and it urges us to consider how the discourse of rights conditions the types of political claims that actors (both Muslims and non-Muslims) not only can articulate, but also imagine.

The question of darura (necessity)

Zeina, a pious, Tunisian Muslim woman in her 30 s was, at the time of our interview, involved in several Islamic organizations in Brussels, and she worked as an administrative employee for the Executive for Muslims, the representative body of Muslims in Belgium. While she considered her professional and political activities to be an essential component of her faith, she equally insisted that she would never allow these to interfere with the performance of her religious duties:

Zeina: I mean, whether I’m working or not, I will never miss the Fajr-prayer. Even if this means that I will need to arrive an hour later at my work, no matter what, I will never miss my Fajr-prayer. This is very clear to me. Ramadan is Ramadan. They will never make me miss a Taraweeh prayer. Voila, this is how it is. I don’t mind attending meetings, I want to be active, I don’t mind travelling and participating at conferences and everything, but I will never give up my practice. There are elements of my practice that I will never give up.

Zeina’s insistence on the correct (i.e. punctual) performance of her religious duties introduces a language that challenges the privatization of religious practices. Her account expresses the primacy of a religious temporality, exemplified here by a precise rhythm of prayers that is non-negotiable. She opposes the hegemonic predominance (‘I will never give up’) of a secular temporality that forces her to compromise her religious duties by prioritizing the demands of the mundane. She rejects the structural primacy of a secular temporality, which seeks to circumscribe one’s religious subjectivity to distinct spheres, and she underscores the primary obligation of her religious duties. Zeina does not simply try to negotiate the Islamic practices in the workplace – unlike Zakia, who tried to find a quiet room to pray, or Khadija and Naima, two Islam teachers from Antwerp, who performed şalat during the break in their empty classrooms. Zeina, by contrast, defies the primacy of a secular temporality by letting herself be guided by the rhythms of her Islamic commitment.

In the case of Zeina, the consistent fulfillment of religious duties led to a disruption of a secular temporality. As such, her case is illustrative of the often perceived ‘clash’ that might exist between a strong religious commitment and participation in social life. In what follows, however, I will turn to narratives in which this commitment to the correct performance of the şalat did not necessarily result in a similar set of contradictions. In doing so, my aim is not to show that Muslim subjects can and do integrate into secular life. I rather wish to understand the different effects of such religious rationalities (and subject positions) which are not only compatible with the operations of the secular, but in some cases even participate in its reproduction. Let me start with the case of Rachida, a practising Muslim of Moroccan origin in her late 30 s who worked as a social worker in Brussels. Commenting on the possibility of praying at work, which she could consider since she had her own private office, she said:

Rachida: No, for me praying, I do it in a place where I feel good. Here  … I don’t know … but it’s stressful here […] when I’m in my office, it’s to work. So from that moment on, for me praying, I think you should do it correctly, you see. Here? Well … if I would start praying, I would have to watch the door if someone rings or …  You need certain conditions. And in my case, I can only do it at home.

Central in Rachida’s account is the capacity to concentrate upon her prayers, which implies being in a space where she would not be interrupted. Praying correctly, therefore, not only means praying on time but also entails the circumstances under which she would pray: i.e. without stress. Representing work as a stressful environment that does not provide for these minimal conditions results in a position where the correct (i.e. concentrated) performance of şalat is relegated to the domestic sphere. Loubna, a pious Muslim woman of Moroccan background in her 30 s, similarly defined the job context as a stressful environment that would impede on the correct performance of the prayers. At the time of our interview, she worked at the Executive for Muslims in Belgium, where she had the opportunity to fulfill all her religious duties in the job context, including praying on time. Although she was satisfied in her current job, she had been contemplating the idea of a new job for a while. One of the issues that bothered her, however, was the idea that she would have to give in to the secular demands of a new work environment. Whereas taking off her veil was not an option for her, she displayed more flexibility towards the idea that she would not be able to pray on time:

Loubna: The question I would be confronted with might be praying. Praying [on time] is something important. But ehm  … it’s not a condicio sine qua non. If I’m not allowed to pray, I mean, I will not make a big deal out of it, voila, because it’s a case of necessity. […] If I was to negotiate with a future employer, and he tells me, ‘yes, you can pray, but it will be at the cost of your breaks’, then I would experience stress. Managing my lunch-time, and my time for praying, I would really be stressed. And I’m afraid of that, of living in stress.

Like Rachida, Loubna insisted on the stress that might result from having to combine her free time at work with the time that is needed to pray. In contrast to Rachida, however, she did not connect this stress with the validity of the prayers but rather links it with her personal well-being: ‘I’m afraid of that, of living in stress.’ A second important element that emerges here is the way she frames her decision to accept the impossibility of praying at work as ‘a case of necessity’. This argument invokes the Islamic principle of darura, which grants Muslims exceptions in their religious practice when faced with difficult circumstances or a hostile environment. In this case, the issue that is raised concerns the possibility of delaying one’s prayers until after work. ²⁰ This principle was also mentioned by Hafed, a practising Muslim who worked in a community organization in Brussels and hosted a radio talk show on the Muslim radio station Al-Manar: ‘If you see that the employer isn’t flexible and he doesn’t want to know about it, Islam allows you some flexibility.’ By invoking the argument of darura, Loubna and Hafed articulate a position that is substantiated on Islamic grounds yet has the paradoxical effect of reproducing the principle of privatization. These different positions illustrate the dynamic structure of the Muslim tradition and the way it is composed of diverse – and even contradictory – understandings of what counts as a correct performance and a case of necessity. ²¹

The headscarf controversy produced similar convergences between the secular principle of privatization and the Islamic rationale of darura. For example, Egyptian scholar Sheikh Mohammad Sayed Tantawi evoked fury in December 2003 when he defended France’s right to ban all visible religious signs from schools. While he restated the obligatory nature of the hijab for Muslim women, he also defended France’s right – as a non-Muslim country – to ban the headscarf. He authorized Muslim women to take off their headscarves as a case of necessity. ²² Rather than simply illustrating the instrumentalization of a particular scholar for political purposes, arguments like those of Tantawi and the cases observed in this section invite us to consider the ways in which secular practices of governance (i.e. the privatization of religion) are sustained through the mobilization of diverse, and even contradictory, discursive traditions, which draw upon their own criteria of assessment. This insight not only highlights the heterogeneous character of the secular, but it also compels us to challenge any simplistic juxtaposition of secularism with religion. The critical task is to analyse how religious traditions become mobilized and reconfigured in the constitution of secular modernity.

‘We’re not in a Muslim country’: Praying at work as a minority claim

A last set of justifiers underscores the social position of this concerned group: that of a cultural and religious minority in a non-Muslim country. While secularism is generally viewed (and defended) as a protection of religious minorities, the accounts explored here show how one’s minority position results in the adoption of more moderate positions towards this request of praying at work. Soha, for instance, a practising Muslim in her late 30 s, of Moroccan background, who lived in Antwerp and worked as a translator in the courthouses. Although she wasn’t opposed to the possibility of praying at work, she defended the employer’s right to refuse such requests:

Soha: I think, I told you, everyone makes their own rules. If you are pious, and you want to wear the headscarf, and there is a job that doesn’t allow you to: go away, and find something somewhere else. […] You are in a Belgian society. You shouldn’t try doing so in Tunisia huh? In Turkey neither, it’s not allowed there. You have to adapt, but you shouldn’t adapt to the extent that you have to erase your faith or I don’t know what. No, you are who you are [Ge moet u aanpassen, maar ge moet u niet zodanig aanpassen da ge uw geloof of weet ik wat moet wegcijferen. Neen, ge zijt wie dat ge zijt].

Central in this quote is the reference to the right to make up one’s ‘own rules’. In doing so, the centrality of the autonomy of the will becomes redefined as the basis of any type of agreement. The possibility of making up one’s own rules is not only applied to the employer – who has the right to ban, but also to veiled women – who have the right to refuse a job that does not accept them with their headscarf. Soha, however, extends in a second moment this argument to Belgian society as a whole. The employer’s opposition to Muslim claims becomes consequently framed as a society’s right, which is not Muslim. Soha insists on the necessity to ‘adapt’ to the Belgian context, hence representing Muslims as a minority and reiterating the existence of a dominant culture to which they should conform. Yet Soha’s insistence on the necessity to adapt – or integrate, another much used concept in the Flemish context – is differentiated here from the idea of assimilation of foreign Muslim minorities to a ‘host’ society. She disturbs this reading in two ways. First, by not limiting this question of ‘adapting’ to Belgium, but also referring to Muslim societies (Turkey and Tunisia) that are organized according to similar secular principles. In doing so, Soha turns this question into an interrogation of the relationship between religious minorities and a secular context. Second, a distinction is made between ‘adapting’ and ‘assimilation’ – as explained in the last sentences of this quote. The notion of ‘faith’ figures as a distinguishing marker between both concepts and is considered as the constitutive element of one’s Islamic subjectivity – ‘you are who you are’. This allows her to downplay the importance of certain practices such as praying at work, which she views as secondary claims. Zakia, whom we encountered earlier, was more explicit about the necessity of Muslims to adapt to a non-Muslim context. While she did occasionally pray at work and defended this possibility as a right, she also cautioned against too firm claims in this direction:

Zakia: You should find a middle ground. If you cannot pray at work, you’re not going to make a fuss about it and start upsetting people. No, you should keep a low profile, low profile. You cannot require everything from a society where everything is not provided for Muslims. We aren’t on Islamic soil [terre d’islam]. If we were on Islamic soil, of course you could have demands. […] But here, you cannot expect too much, you need to give time to society.

Advocating the right to pray as a hard claim would only be sound in a country where the majority of the population is Muslim. Yet in a non-Muslim country, such as Belgium, a certain amount of restraint is needed. Significant here is that this reference to one’s minority position is interwoven with an Islamic ethic of moderation and the necessity to seek a wassatiyah (middle ground). This requirement of moderation seems moreover to be conditioned by the presence of Muslims on non-Muslim soil, which seems to suggest that Zakia would be open to harder claims in a Muslim country. A second element concerns the necessity to avoid ‘upsetting people’, i.e. non-Muslims. This idea of restraint becomes consequently linked with the domain of the affect and the need to consider the potentially disruptive character of such claims. ²³ Yet Zakia’s position is not a fixed one, as can be concluded from the last sentences of this quote. She rather describes it as a tactical concession for a longer-term prospect in which Muslim minorities would be able to practise several facets of their religiosity: ‘you need to give time to this society’, she explains. Zakia’s position should, therefore, not simply be read as the reassertion of the minority position of Muslims in an essentially non-Muslim society, but equally entails a tactical component. It figures here as a means for societal transformation, which she understands as a steady and gradual development.

Zakia and Soha’s accounts invite us to complicate the idea of privatization of religion by understanding how the majority/minority nexus plays into it. At the heart of their accounts lies a reference to the dominant architecture of Belgium, which is understood as a non-Muslim country and has implication on the type of claims certain religious groups can make. While Soha adds more complexity to this understanding by equating the case of Belgium with other secular countries such as Turkey or Tunisia, central in both accounts is the idea that the majority figures as a guiding principle in structuring one’s religious conduct. Their position is consequently one of ‘adaptation’ to a dominant culture and its sensibilities. It has become conventional to point at how the idea of minorities is a correlative of the historical emergence of the nation state in which the idea of political citizenship is equated with a set of habits and practices (Arendt, 2004[1951]: 351; Gilroy, 1992[1987]: 45). Minorities become represented as those who need to adapt to these dominant cultures, lest exceptional arrangements can be provided. Instead of guaranteeing religious pluralism, the very idea of a civic space, which is accessible to all, seems therefore to comfortably converge with, or even reinforce, the idea of a dominant, i.e. secular, culture (see also Asad, 2003: 174). At stake here is therefore a need to understand how nationalist imaginaries not only converge, but also coincide with and reinforce, secular modes of operation.

Conclusion: Reproducing the idea of privatization through distinct modes of justification

The successive headscarf controversies in France, Belgium and Germany; the regulation of the face-veil in France and Belgium; the controversies on ritually slaughtered meat in the Netherlands and the UK or the riot over the Danish cartoons are just few examples of events that have stirred liberal sensibilities, producing heated debates over the compatibility of Islam and European societies. These discussions have also resulted in numerous calls to redefine and circumscribe the ‘secular’ character of the public sphere, particularly in a context where Islam is becoming Europe’s second-largest religion. Besides presupposing a binary of incommensurability between the West and Islam, such calls also draw on a specific, limited understanding of secularism, framing it as a clear-cut set of doctrines that are incompatible with particular practices or conducts, i.e. veiling at school or at the workplace, feeling offended towards blasphemous cartoons or praying at work. This article has sought to complicate this understanding of secularism by analysing responses to the issue of praying at work. These accounts of second-generation practising and non-practising Muslims in Belgium have demonstrated how the principle of a secular public is both reproduced and contested in complex ways through these debates around religion.

First, it is important to observe that most interlocutors explicitly or implicitly reproduced the idea that the prayers should be primarily practised at home. This means that they drew on positions that situate and frame the idea of praying at the workplace as an exception rather than a rule, irrespective of their degree of practice. While a few opposed this practice (Faiza, Yassine), most engaged in it even while circumscribing its performance to a number of conditions. I have taken this observation as an indication of the way the secular operates by normalizing the presence of (certain) religious practices within specific contexts and problematizing them in other contexts (Fadil, 2008). This problematization, as Talal Asad has suggested (2003) does not necessarily occur by excluding religious conduct from places considered ‘public.’ It rather consists of a set of conditions, rules and customs that circumscribe and regulate these religious manifestations (i.e. which aspects of one’s religious conduct can be performed where), and that also ascribe this religious conduct a status of marginality. We saw, for instance, how several respondents welcomed the idea of praying at the workplace and framed it as a ‘right’. Simultaneously, however, these same interviewees also stressed the importance of attaining this opportunity to pray by negotiating with the employer rather than presenting it as a ‘claim’. The point here is not to dismiss the asymmetrical power relations between employer and employee that exist in in relation to any practice. One could indeed argue that the cases observed here simply reflect the kinds of negotiations at play towards any kind of demand in the work context, whether they are of a religious nature or not (such as child care or taking a break for a cigarette). I am arguing, more precisely, that this asymmetry intersects with a secular rationale that turns such ‘religious demands’ into ‘privileges’ that might not only be disruptive for the work context, but for ‘society’ at large. The workplace figures, in these kinds of narratives, not simply as a place of labour, but it represents society that deliberates over the status of religious practices.

Another important observation is that the reticence to pray at work was not simply justified by strong secular principles of neutrality. An Islamic rationale (darura) was equally invoked to justify the preference to pray at home rather than at work, which illustrates that Islamic modes of reasoning do not simply oppose the operation of the secular, but in many ways can accompany its operation. These observations invite us to consider the complex ways in which secular arrangements are established and maintained, how heterogeneous justifications and diverse imaginaries are mobilized in these processes. This article also converges with the recent work that seeks to underscore the historical contingencies that undergird such a secular arrangement and how religious movements and theologies play an important role in its establishment (de Vries and Sullivan, 2006, Hunter, 2009). Rather than presuming the secular to be an homogeneous entity that exists through a singularity of rationales, I have been seeking to understand how this apparent ‘coherence’ is established through a systematic assemblage of a heterogeneous set of repertoires. Foucault’s notion of discursive formation can help us to conceptualize secularism as a power structure that operates and is reproduced throughout the mobilization of heterogeneous elements. In The Archeology of Knowledge (2002[1969]), he defines a discursive formation as the regulation that exists between a limited set of statements. Discourse describes an ensemble of regularities that are constitutive of what we come to consider as ‘reality’, and that are reiterated and (re)produced through discursive (linguistic) and non-discursive operations. Applying this notion of discourse to secularism requires us to examine the latter in its heterogeneity. As Talal Asad has stated, ‘a variety of concepts, practices, and sensibilities […] have come together to form “the secular”’ (Asad, 2003: 16). We must also investigate how this heterogeneity comes together, asking under which grammar of ‘coherence’ it is established and shaped (see also Sayyid, 2009: 186). Consequently, such an approach invites us to understand how ‘diversity’ figures as a resource rather than an obstacle to the operations of the secular and to overcome analytically unhelpful oppositions between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’. The analytical question, therefore, no longer asks to what extent heterogeneous normative orders (or religious pluralism) undercut secularism, but instead asks how this order exists, is reproduced and maintained throughout the mobilization and regulation of this heterogeneity.