Muslim students less likely to be awarded top class degrees.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

That’s not exactly FM’s point, though. He emphasized the difference between secular and non-secular Muslims and Jews. He was addressing people who ‘...have a lot of faith in nonsense from holy books...’ as opposed to making some sort of blanket generalization about all or even most believers. 

He says that "secular" people don't believe the myths, and religious people do believe the literal truth of the myths, which cause them to waste mental energy on reconciling these things.

This is not true.

Here’s what he said:

Most religious people that are in academia are secular and especially Jews who are mostly only culturally Jewish (they don't exactly believe in burning bush and flood). I mean if you look at Nobel laureates you can see a lot of "Jews" but basically no Muslims.

Similar case is with Christians.

Of course, secular Muslims are still very rare, so that is perhaps why they aren't in noticable numbers in academia.
Because if you have a lot of faith in nonsense from holy books, you have to spend a lot of mental energy every day to rationalize those nonsensical things in order so that they appear to you as "real" in face of actuall reality, so you don't have enough mental energy left to do the real thinking and learning.

I think you’re missing - deliberately or not - his qualifiers. He didn’t say ‘religious people’ - he said people who have faith in the nonsense in the holy books. I agree with you completely that this qualifier excludes the great majority of religionists. 

You’re replying as if he made some sort of sweeping generalization about believers. He didn’t.

Re-read the post with that in mind, I think you’ll see what I’m driving at.

Boru