Secularization is one of the key concepts for understanding religion in modern politics. The return of religion, mostly as a vibrant Islam, brings this idea into question. After 9/11 Jürgen Habermas, one of the leading thinkers of Critical Theory, addressed this problem by making the proposal of a post-secular society (2001). He further developed his idea in a debate with Joseph Ratzinger, one year before the latter became Pope Bendedict XVI (2005/2006). Pope Benedict’s speech delivered at Ratisbona, which is mainly known for its problematic dealing with Islam, can be read as a continuation of this debate. Habermas responded to the speech in a newspaper article (2007) which fueled a public debate with German Jesuits (2008). These encounters read together highlight what Hurd (2007, 2010) understands as the two versions of Western secularism and the attempt to reformulate them under the pressure from globalization and Islam. Based on the approaches of Berger (1999), Norris/Inglehart (2004) and Jenkins (2007) the paper analyses these constructions of a new post-secular narrative of how to combine religion and reason and sperate religion and violence to bridge secular and religious thinking for a global public sphere. Special attention is on the attempt to reformulate the dominant discourse of secularism in order to make it more inclusive while still drawing a clear borderline between a religious and a secular sphere, particularly in order to challenge Islam.
