SBL Starting a Qu'ran Society?

In a news release the Society for Biblical Literature announced that it had received a grant to start a corresponding society to study the Qu'ran. According to the news release, it would be a separate organization doing for the Qu'ran what SBL does for the Bible (insert your own liberal joke here).

This is not going to be some alarmist post about Islam taking over the Bible or some such nonsense. I might have more serious questions if it were going to be done within SBL, but have no problem with a separate organization.

But I do have questions and really wonder how well this has been thought out.

1. Are there enough Islamic scholars that such an organization could be self-sustaining? There are obviously enough Muslims in the world, but college-level scholars? Perhaps I will be surprised at the number.

2. Islam has not exactly been tolerant of non-religious study of the Qu'ran. Non-religious scholars within SBL are always moaning about those of us who see more than sociology in the Bible but want to talk about theology. It's one thing for churchmen to get upset with scholars who don't toe their own theological line, but what will happen when some paper is presented at SQS (proposed name--Society for Qu'ranic Studies) casting doubt on the origins of the Qu'ran or point out that it is hostile to women? Will the society and its scholars receive the Salman Rushdie treatment?

I don't know how this is going to work out, but those are my initial thoughts.