Reviewed by Murad Wilfried Hofmann 
From its very beginning, Islam has been under attack not only physically but academically. Christian demagogues like John of Damascus, Peter the Venerable, Raymundus Lull, and Martin Luther later were followed by infamous Jewish, Christian or secularist Orientalists like Julius Wellhausen, Gustav Flügel, Theodor Nöldeke, Ignaz Goldziher, Alphonse Mingana, Snouck Hurgronje or Joseph Schacht. They all did their best to prove that Islam was a corrupted Jewish-Christian copy, based on forged ahadith, without any originality or saving grace.
This scientific onslaught increasingly focused on the Qur’an, to be dismantled in the same way the Old Testament (OT) and New Testament (NT) had been already. The latest wave of attacks, as vicious and biased as any before, was and is fuelled by the likes of Arthur Jeffrey, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, Otto Pretzl, John Wansborough, Andrew Rippin, Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, Gerd Puin and “Ibn Warraq”. Outrageously they more or less claim that the entire Islamic history is mere fiction and the Qur’an a—late 2nd or 3rd Hijri century—product, projected backwards by what belatedly came to be called Muslims.
Can the Dead Hear? Commentary of a Hadith from Sahih Muslim