Virtue Ethics

I keep on reading about the resurgence of virtue ethics, about Aristotle and social norms. I do not understand how normative ethics can be divorced from metaethics? Why are so many people so keen to distance the choices we make from any kind of reasonable justification? It baffles me that many people who make this move are atheists; they are not clearing the ground for religion, they seem to think that "It feels good to most of us so it must be 'good'". Is this sociobiology gone mad?
This evening the BBC's PM programme was a litany of muslims whingeing about how their belief system deserves respect. Time and again we heard how a social group defined by its idiot reliance on the dodgy record of the sayings of a self-serving tribal chief takes umbrage when others suggest that their reliance on dogma for their normative ethics is deluded and dangerous. They regard faith as a virtue. Is it unreasonable to ask why? Is it any more unreasonable to ask for a metaethical justification for 'virtue' before allowing it free rein?