So What Exactly Does It Mean?

So what exactly does it mean? The Prophet (peace be upon him) never gave a particular definition of how big, how strong, how much of a membership each of these groups would have. So that is open to interpretation. But obviously the Prophet (peace be upon him) had an idea in his mind; he had a criterion in mind about how big these groups were supposed to be. We do not know that; we can only speculate. So until the Day of Judgement, our belief, according to this hadith, is that there will be 73 groups of a certain criterion, and that it will add up to 73. Otherwise, if every single group were actually added up in terms of the various distinctive factors that they have, it would go well beyond a few hundred. Mawlānā Khalīl Aḥmad Sahāranpūrī actually quotes this as well, in his Badhl al-Majhūd.

That is the unfortunate situation around us. The questions come, basically: "Brother, do you believe in tawḥīd?" A person answers that of course he believes in tawḥīd; it means the oneness of Allah. "No, no: give us a categorisation of that. Do you believe in tawḥīd al-rubūbiyyah? Do you believe in tawḥīd al-ulūhiyyah?" The common person has never heard of this. If it is explained to him what it means (that it means: does he believe that his Lord, his Rabb, the One who provides for him and who sustains him, is only One?) he says: of course He is.

Yes, in terms of action, people do other things, and they think that their work is what provides for them, and their boss, their employer, their business, or the dollar, or the pound, or whatever. But in terms of belief, everybody is going to say yes, they believe that. Do they believe there is only one entity worthy of worship? Of course, yes. "But you need to understand it as tawḥīd al-ulūhiyyah, tawḥīd al-rubūbiyyah, and so on": this categorisation. There is nothing wrong with the categorisation. But it is not one of those core issues which every Muslim needs to know, like Allah is One. They do not need to know this detail. If they are asked and they have the correct belief, that is what is important. But for everybody to have this in rote fashion, this, this, this and this, is where the problem lies: to insist on that, and then to declare people deviant, or kāfir, when they are not able to remember this, or to take it on in the way that others want them to take it on.