How exciting even the driest account would be -- and this is not a dry account -- of the Higher Criticism, getting closer to its refractory and unwilling object of study, Islam. 

Dear Mr. ibn Warraq, Fantastic job on the conference! And thanks for this fine report. Forensic study of the Koran will reveal the Koran's purpose as a troop conditioner and the late concoction of the caliph/warlords who led them. The Koran is obviously an after-the-fact conflation of various Ebionite, heretical Christian and non-authoritative rabbinical  texts stirred together with generous dollops of paganism and sadistic cruelty (decapitation, mutilation, boiling drinks). These are angry sermons read to the troops to get them in a "fighting mood" before they are sent out to murder innocent families. To a person coming from a "Golden Rule"-based religion, reading the Koran for the first time is a tremendous shock to the mind. The continual hatred it expresses against unbelievers and its constant calls for violence convince one that Islam is what we know today as a mind-control "religious cult", perhaps the most successful one, but only because of Islam's extreme and inherent viciousness. Nothing will change that viciousness, but scholarship can expose its roots and educated, informed ex-Muslims will do the rest by dismantling this great prison called Islam. My expectation is that when the scholarly work is done, the collapse of Islam will be as sudden and irreversible as the collapse of totalitarianism in the Soviet empire or the Romania of Ceasescu.  

Best luck and thanks to all the scholars involved in uncovering the fingerprints on this crime against humanity.