![wiki the people vs muhammad wiki the people vs muhammad](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/vsbattles/images/2/24/Avdol_jojoeoh.png)
![wiki the people vs muhammad wiki the people vs muhammad](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hkDn5k9iP44/hqdefault.jpg)
Regarding the stories as a whole, Roohi's view is that "if we tend not to go so far as to reject them as ex nihilo inventions, it may be safe at least to hold an agnostic view as to their historicity" and that it would be "prudent not to accept at face value" the image portrayed in the sira. Roohi also questions a few other assassination stories due to plausible motives to cast the alleged killers in a more favourable light or having transferred motifs: Ibn Sunayna (part of a trend to glorify his alledged assassin, Muhayyisa), Amr ibn Jihash (the hitman was allegedly hired by his cousin Ibn Yamin, who elsewhere is reported to have deplored the murder of Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf), Al-Yusayr ibn Rizam and Khalid ibn Sufyan (whose alleged murders by Unays include a number of transferable story motifs). The story of 'Asma' bint Marwan's murder by the blind Umayr employs a repeated motif of a blind man killing a female blasphemer, which occurs a second time later in the list below without named protagonists. Maslama, who also is said to have beheaded the Jewish leader Kinana and participated in the killings of the Jewish poet Ibn Abi al-Huqaiq already mentioned and Jewish leader al-Yusayr mentioned below. The identities of the alleged assassins of Ka'b in turn have been argued to be concocted to whitewash their Jewish affiliations and sympathies, particularly in the case of Muhammad b. Of relevance to the list below, Roohi argues on the basis of repeated story and textual devices that the assassination of Ibn Abi al-Huqaiq was largely fabricated by the Khazraj tribe whom al-Tabari records desired to compete with the assassination by a rival Medinan tribe, al-Aws, of another blasphemous poet, Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf. In a detailed analysis of protagonists, repeated motifs and textual devices, Ershan Roohi has identified that several accounts of political assassinations in the sira literature may have been motivated by tribes seeking to glorify their ancestors, or for apologetic purposes to exonerate them or their tribe for having at one time resisted acceptance of Islam, in the latter case particularly those stories which involve assassins of Jewish descent or affiliation killing members of their own tribe or confederates for the sake of Muhammad and the new religion. Typically, academic scholars have doubts about the reliability of the sῑra literature and the maghāzī (raid, expedition) accounts therein.