and the hadith: “My ummah will split into seventy-three sects, and the only group that will be saved is the one that holds to what I and my Companions hold.”

He then said: It has therefore become incumbent upon the whole ummah to know the way of the Companions, and that can only be reached through their virtuous followers—those renowned for transmitting reports and who refuse newly invented doctrines—so that this knowledge is passed down, generation after generation, through people who were known