When you don't take responsibility for what you believe...
Anglo-americans (who are mostly christian) do not understand the concept that in Islam, as in Judaism, you are BORN into the religion (it is not a "choice"). In Judaism it is matrilineal, in Islam it is patrilineal.
One of the side benefits of having an Obama candidacy is that it gets this discussion of religion out on the table. Who determines your faith and your beliefs - you, or your parents?
The above simplistic review of religion categorizes it as an all or nothing question. I just can't see it that way. In the end, each individual has the responsibility of accepting or declining even the tiniest article within a belief structure, regardless of what their parents say. Period. Some religious cultures try to take that option away from the individual with the idea that a person is "born into" a religion.
But that is part of the faith's structure, and each individual has the option to accept or reject it. Even if most accept it, that does not mean that the option isn't there. Even if the religious culture demeans the individual for rejecting it, that doesn't mean the option is there. If a child is born of Jewish parents, who then immediately put the child up for adoption, and the child is adopted by Christian parents who raise the child as Christian - what is that child? When the child decides, as she grows up, that she accepts Buddhism as her faith, what is that person?
In other words - faith is not genetic regardless of what religious conventions may push. And it's time this country start getting their heads around this a bit more.