Hadith: Muhammad (sws) said:
72 out of 73 sects of Islam will go to hell and only one will go to heaven. The one sect that will go to heaven will be the ‘main body’ (Al Jamaah).
In today’s world, which sect is the ‘main body’ and how to identify them when there are so many religious scholars and sects differing with each other and generally do not accept each other’s point of view?
My own sect is ‘sunni + deobandi’, so I am scared whether my sect is right or wrong. Should I keep my options open to other sects?
Answer
No hadith of the prophet, alaihissalaam, can go against the Quran.
The Quran guarantees that the person who believes and does good deeds will enter the paradise. If we take this hadith in its literal sense then it would mean that even if a person is believing correctly and doing good deeds in the correct way, he will still go to hell for not being a part of a religious sect.
The Quran also condemns those religious people who divide themselves into religious sects such that one group is blindly opposed to the other. How can this Quranic teaching be adjusted with what has been apparently mentioned in the hadith!
The Quran also urges believers to hold firm to the rope of Allah (i.e. the Quran) and not to break into sects. The hadith you have mentioned, if accepted, proposes just the opposite of what the Quran is saying.
I therefore believe that this hadith has been misreported and the prophet, alaihisaalaam, couldn’t have said it. And Allah knows the best.