Sorry to reply to myself, but I’m going to re-read “Among the Believers”. He wrote it in the early eighties, but it was/is kind of prescient.
His main thesis (IIRC) was the cognitive dissonance between the ideal of the perfect Islamic State, disgust & hatred of the’ West’ on the one hand and the reliance on that very same ‘West’ for anything, from medicine, education & science to industrial products & engineering, on the other. Fundamentalist Islam as a ‘parasitic’ ideology.

I think one could indeed call ‘atheists’ a group (or a ‘demographic’, I’m not sure I understand fully what the latter is). However, they are a very diverse group, from regressive leftists to libertarians, environmentalists to global warming deniers, communists & fascists to Enlightenment democrats. And yes, there is one common denominator: they do not buy into the insanity religion is. Lest that sounds too negative: a majority of atheists tends to be pro-science, pro-democracy, pro-human rights, pro-environmental protection, pro-freedom of speech and to a greater or lesser degree ‘pro-choice’, I think (or should I say: I hope?).
[One could, of course, argue that e.g. communism is not really atheist: their Gods/prophets are Marx and Engels or the present Party Leader. Same goes for fascism: not nescessarily atheist].

Interesting. I’ve heard that too about visiting Islamic countries, but I thought it was just the whole non-believer thing. Also, it’s actually illegal in Saudi Arabia to be an atheist.

Atheists aren’t a group in my opinion, but they are a demographic. Experience has taught many atheists that they’re more likely to get on with another atheist than an evangelical Christian so they would likely rate atheists higher than evangelical Christians. Also, in the US atheists tend to have a bit of a feeling of siege mentality with everyone hating them, so I would expect them to rate other atheists much higher than I would if the survey was done in NZ. Personally, I would probably rate everyone at about 50% because there is not so much separation between any demographic grouping here. Being so small we basically have to get on with each other. All schools, workplaces, neighbourhoods etc have people from all walks of life.

If the high rating that groups give themselves is due to the pernicious influence of religion, as stated above, then how do we explain the similarly high rating that the atheist “group” gives itself?

[*most communists are indeed atheists, but most atheists are not communist.]