The hadith attributed to Muhammad and known as the hadith of 73 sects states that there will be 73 different sects and groups within Islam, and that only one of these groups will reach salvation or heaven, while the others will be destined for hell.
For example, Sunni scholars such as Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Malaṭī, ‘Abd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī, Abū l-Muzaffar al-Isfarā'inī, al-Shahrastānī, Sunnis were the saved sect, according to an Ismā'īlī scholar such as Abū Tammām al-Khawārizmī, Ismailis, according to important Mu'tazili scholar Qāḍī 'Abd al-Jabbār the sect that achieved salvation was the Mu'tazilites.
[4] Recently, some Muslim scholars have emerged who claim that this hadith does not belong to Muhammad but was produced later.
[5] Even if some Sufis accept this hadith, they associate salvation not directly with membership in an exoteric sect and adhering to a creed, but with a spiritual state reached through a mystical journey.
Commenting on a poem by the Turkish Sufi Niyazi Mısri, another Sufi, Muhammad Nuru'l Arabi, sees the sect that will be saved among the 73 sects as belonging not to members of a particular Islamic sect, but to those who have made their mystical journey and reached gnosis and thus become true humans.