Al-Albani declared Ibn Sa'd's chain of transmission to be weak as well, as it includes Al-Waqidi:Ibn Sa'd → Al-Waqidi → 'Abd Allah ibn al-Harith ibn al-Fudayl → Al-Harith ibn al-Fudayl Al-Waqidi has been condemned as an untrustworthy narrator and has been frequently and severely criticized by scholars, thus his narrations have been abandoned by the majority of hadith scholars. Yahya ibn Ma'een said: "Al-Waqidi narrated 20,000 false hadith about the prophet". Al-Shafi'i, Ahmad ibn Hanbal and Al-Albani said: "Al-Waqidi is a liar" while Al-Bukhari said he didn't include a single letter by Al-Waqidi in his hadith works. In addition, this isnad is discontinued (muʻḍal) as Al-Harith ibn al-Fudayl never met any of Muhammad's companions. Modern assessments Jane Smith, in her study Women, Religion and Social Change in Early Islam'' points at the high influence of poets and poetry at the time of Muhammad in Arabia. She states that assassinations of poets such as Abu Afak and Asma after Muhammad's final victory were the result of fears of "their continuing influence", and that this episode "constitutes interesting testimony of the power of their position, as well as of the recited words". V. J. Ridgeon sees certain parallels between Khomeini's declaration of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the incident of Asma bint Marwan's assassination. Some later assessments tie the episode involving Asma directly to the killing of Abu Afak. Richard Gottheil and Hartwig Hirschfeld state in the Jewish Encyclopedia that some traditionalist sources asserted that Asma was a Jewess, just as Abu Afak was a Jew, and put this fact forward "an excuse" for the killing – a fact which they in turn cast doubt on, though they also point the conflicting scholarly perspectives on the matter. Contemporary Muslim writers respond to these charges by stating that the two stories of Asma bint Marwan and Abu Afak, they were classified by the majority of hadith scholars in history as fabricated. Even in the hypothetical stories, these two characters not only ridiculed, but incited against Muslims and the Prophet. "They were urging their people to rise up and fight the Muslims, and kill them, which made them direct enemies". See also Umm Qirfa Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf Prophetic biography References Arab women Arabic-language women poets Assassinated people in the medieval Islamic world Assassinated Jews Medieval Jewish women Medieval Jewish poets Medieval women poets Opponents of Muhammad People from Medina Poets of the early