This article analyses the way in which the question of performing salat (Islamic prayer) at the workplace is addressed by second-generation Maghrebi-Muslims in Belgium. Over recent years, western Europe has witnessed a number of societal debates on the increasing visibility of Islam in the public sphere. A key argument often used in these discussions concerns the necessity to defend the ‘neutral’ or ‘secular’ character of the public sphere towards Muslim claims. In so doing, the idea of religious pluralism becomes opposed to the idea of a secular public sphere. This paper seeks to complicate this perspective by questioning the idea that praying in public (i.e. at the workplace) figures as a religious claim that is defended unequivocally by Muslims. The narratives explored here show that Muslims – irrespective of the degree of their religious commitment – do not hold similar positions towards this question. Contrasting perspectives about the idea of the public, that of a ‘correct’ religious practice and the position of Islam in the Belgian public sphere rather informed these positions. Consequently, the analysis of the different accounts shows that what often passes as a single principle (that of privatization of religion) in fact consists of an assemblage of heterogeneous discursive repertoires, which address the question of religion in the public in a diverse set of ways. Such a perspective invites us to consider how secularism is reproduced and maintained throughout heterogeneous normative orders, including religious ones.