Calling nationalism a religion begs the question of how religion is defined.

Evidence

However, I am not persuaded that because national political life depends on ceremonial and on symbols of the sacred, it should be represented as a kind of religion—that it is enough to point to certain parallels with what we intuitively recognize as religion. One problem with this position is that it takes as unproblematic the entire business of defining religion. It does not ask why particular elements of “religion” as a concept should be picked out as definitive, and therefore fails to consider the discursive roles they play in different situations. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 920

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A precise methodological complaint: analogy-to-religion arguments import an unexamined definition of religion and ignore how ‘religion’ functions discursively in different contexts.
• XREF: Echoes Asad’s earlier critique of Geertz in Genealogies of Religion, and ties into the reader’s general interest in definitional power moves. — connects to: Religion and nationalism mutually constitute identity and resist clean separation — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 292