Who exactly are the Jamāʿah?1 Al-Jamāʿah refers to those individuals that are saved and protected due to their belief and methodology, from being cast into the fire by Allāh (subḥānahū wa-taʿālá). It is not a title applied to a group who believes that the mere title ‘al-Jamāʿah’ itself will save them, rather it is a term that is applied to a group who fulfill the criteria of the Sharīʿah of Allāh revealed upon the tongue of the Messenger of Allāh (ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) and laid down within the Qurʾān and the Sunnah, and those principles must be fulfilled; once they are fulfilled then one can be regarded as being from the Jamāʿah. It should be known that not everyone who proclaims the shahādah is from the Jamāʿah and will be protected from the fire. This is known due to the ḥadīth of the Messenger of Allāh (ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) in which he states: “My Ummah will be divided into 73 sects, all of them in the fire except the Jamāʿah2.”
So all of these sects will enter the fire except the Jamāʿah, and those which are upon that which the Prophet and his Companions were upon. The intelligent individual will seek to learn who this Jamāʿah is which the Prophet (ṣallallāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) spoke about, since many non-Muslim countries today are scattered with a variety of Masājid, each upon a different maḍh‘hab, from Naqshbandī to Bralwī, to Ṣūfī, Shīʿī, Ikhwānī and so on. So it is upon the Believer to seek out the truth in order that they may be saved from the Fire.
Endnotes:
1 The Legislative Names for Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jamāʿah
2 Explanation of the Ḥadīth of the 73 Sects
