What is a Muslim?

A couple of women, dressed in modern clothing with sparkling beads were spotted during the New Years Eve party.  They wore head coverings the way many Muslim women do.  They also wore mini-skirts, which many Muslim women do not do.  Under the mini-skirts were tights, so they certainly were not showing a lot of skin.

Were they Muslim women?  Or were they not?  Is the stereotype that Muslim women wear head coverings correct?  Don't other women wear head coverings too?

We live in such a multicultural society that it is easy to box people up in the way we wish to perceive them, but the way we classify people may not be entirely correct.  There will be exceptions to the rule.

A friend told me the other day that "all generalisations are incorrect, including this one".

This reminds me of another article I read recently.  It said that "no particular Islamic institution - legal, philosophical, or mystical - has an exclusive prerogative deciding who a Muslim is. It is Muslims themselves, in the plurality of their class, gender, and racialised identities - who are now (as they have always been) on a vastly variegated and open-ended highway making that decision for themselves".

Dabashi, the author, sees that Islam is not the religion in history that it once was.  Now that many adherents live in a modern, "post-Western" world, many are understanding their beliefs in ways that are somewhat different from what others in the Eastern world would have thought a few generations ago.  So besides thinking of Islam as fundamentalists, Sunni, Shia, Imam, men, women, etc; we also get to meet the modern and post-modern ones; at least in some societies.

What do you think?  Are all Muslims the same in the way you perceive them?  Is it anything like the "denominations" that are used to classify different Christian groups?  How would you define what a Muslim is from your point of view?