**4. Conclusions**

Desecularization happens when secularist approaches lose their function of legitimizing power or no longer manage to exclude or restrict religion from or in the public sphere and political institutions. While Political Islam promised to integrate either the pious Sunni or Shia masses, which were excluded or whose participation was restricted under a secular regime, secular nationalism pretended to be strong on integrating diverse religious communities. The rationale of more or less secular interreligious coalitions of minorities, such as the Alawite dominated regime of Syria, is still to prevent the loss of vested rights to a religious, here Sunni, majority.

A postsecular politics of becoming overcomes this dichotomy without suspending the deep pluralism of the region. The plurality of the Middle East is becoming increasingly postsecular as public and political arrangements emergence that integrate more religious communities into public life and political participation without denying pious strata of the population participation on the basis of their creed, as long as they abstain from homogenizing politics as part of their politics of becoming. The traditionalist coalition, spearheaded by the UAE, Egypt, and the Muslim Council of Elders who signed the Document of Human Fraternity, seems to present a promising approach of a postsecular Middle East in that respect. However, the project is certainly embedded within a restrictive and authoritarian version of power politics of becoming.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the German Research Foundation/Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), gran<sup>t</sup> number: 426657443.

**Acknowledgments:** I thank the three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
