A good post Graham which flags up the basic fears of most (non) Muslims but I would take slight issue with your statement above, as I feel Atheism in it's broadest sense means that you reject the idea of a Deity full stop, so that state hardly qualifies you to be objective (or form an opinion) about something you believe does not exist, or as Wiki would have it:
Atheism, in a broad sense, is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.<sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference"></sup> In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.<sup id="cite_ref-RoweRoutledge_1-0" class="reference"></sup> Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.
Therefore
pray tell

laugh

what then are your "own faith leanings?" Are they presumably based on sanctity of the individual, personal rights & freedoms etc etc?
I'm not being critical or challenging - but having been brought up in a Church going family and having spent most of my life practising Agnosticism I am interested in peoples perception & interpretation of "faith" in whatever form, as I do believe we all need some kind of prop whatever tag you put on it, especially at this time.
From this "faith" (whatever it might be) comes the strength to resist the threat of having the right to have
"your" faith, denied you.
You can sense the lack of willpower and the bewilderment of the people at this time, trying to counter something which they do not comprehend, because they have largely LOST faith in a concept, an idea, a community, a deity, a country, a people, a political system etc etc and what you are left with is a host of insecurity on the one hand, and those that would seek to redress this lack of faith by force of arms alone on the other.
And, in my opinion, the reason for that is, that speaking for ourselves in the UK, we have had a quiet revolution over the past 60 years coming from an all dominating World Power to a largely hedonistic & peaceful State and a major vacuum in between... and as you know, nature abhors a vacuum...
(Please guys lets not get into a jingoistic pissing contest here-I merely posit from factual history and care not who's toys are bigger etc)