I’m so obviously American that I don’t think the question merits any navel-gazing or serious thought. But my parents come from a part of the world where there’s a powerful stigma associated with being a dark-skinned Muslim. This is part of what prompted partition, the sense that the Hindu clerisy in eastern Bengal was so economically and culturally dominant that it was retarding social progress among the Muslim majority, a plausible if obviously explosive claim. So why the heck would I stop identifying with other dark-skinned South Asian Muslims? ~Reihan Salam

So, as I read this, Reihan continues to identify himself as a Muslim out of a sense of loyalty to his parents and his ancestral people in Bangladesh.  This is not “unadmirably tribal.”  This is what I might call quite natural.