Europe's Encounter with Islam: The Secular and the Postsecular

The recent interest in the question of religion in international politics has resulted in a growing literature on how religion affects traditional political concepts such as sovereignty, rights, justice, security, dialogue, and the public sphere. This book explores how conceptualisations of secular politics contribute to our understanding of Europe'¬"s conflictual encounters with Islam and how this conflict could be defused by post-secular forms of dialogue. This theoretical framework is then employed through an investigation of some of the most heated controversies that have surrounded Muslims in Europe, namely the French controversy over the headscarf, the publication of the '¬ÜDanish cartoons'¬", and the speech of Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg.