On the second Tuesday of every month,  a group of us gather at a local pub for a beer and an hour or so of conversation. Last night the springboard for our conversation was a New York Times Op-ed piece written by Reza Aslan. It was his response to the Bill Maher’s recent rant about Islam. We had no difficulty filling the hour with our thoughts, comments and reactions.

But, as so often the case with me, my best thoughts push their way to the surface hours after the “official” conversation has ended. So, today I found myself continuing last night’s conversation and mulling over this sentence in Aslan’s Op-Ed piece: “Members of the Islamic State are Muslim for the simple fact that they declare themselves to be.”

That sentence leaves me feeling unsettled and uncomfortable..
Am I really a part of a particular religion just because I say I am?
If that is true then is it also true for other cultural descriptions which define individuals and groups.
For example, could I be Latino just because I say I am?
Or, could I say I was Canadian, just because I say I am?
The answer, of course, is no because additional criteria exist which help to define Latino or nationality.
But, what about religion?
Is it different from all the other cultural descriptors which we use?
Part of the difficulty might be that even within religious traditions no clear cut definition exists of what it means to be a member. For example, I have been told, in all seriousness, by other “Christians” that I am going to hell because of what I believe. But, I have also been told that I was not a true American because of particular positions I have taken or views I have expressed.

I am not sure where all this is going other than I need to think about it more, but my intuition tells me that I am not a Christian just because I say I am which also means that the members of ISIL are not Muslim just because they say they are. There is something more to factor in that is deeper and more important than customs or rituals or the spoken word.