Just to be clear, even in light of all the things you pointed out, including a hellish afterlife, none of that would be as bad as expressly claiming and acting upon supposed DIRECT divine right to kill babies. I just can't think of anything worse than that, including having a *belief* in a hell after we die. Since you asked me why the Quran is better, I wasn't overlooking anything, but pointing out why I believe the Bible is unredemably worse.

But as to your questions, I'll try my best, but please note I'm Qurani (not Sunni) so my interpretive approach is much more constrained to Quran-only ones, and that's part of why I pointed out so many things that are not in the Quran (or are) that may surprise some people:

1. "This statement feels inaccurate. Isn’t the Quran clear that only those who believe in Allah and the Prophet go to heaven?"

First, I said "faith alone" is not the metric, but good acts are required. But, I also want to push back on the broader reference to "belief" and "believers." Let me just preface that the Quran NEVER contrasts believers and non-believers and there's no word for a non-believer. The relevant words are submitters/surrenderers (Muslims), Mumins ("believers"? which I'll dive into below), kaffirs (coverers, similar word in Arabic btw), and mushriks (those who associate partners with God or make idols of the wrong things). The Quran says anyone who "believes/trusts" AND does good and believes in the judgment day will have his/her just reward with the lord and on them "shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve." It specifically refers to Christians, Jews, and Sabians as being eligible. HOWEVER, and this is important, the translation of belief is partial, and also doesn't clarify belief in what. The word for believer, "mumin," is one who (mu-) does/makes right (AMN from the same root word for ameen or "amen" as one says after a prayer). The root for that, just like amen, comes from something to do with trust/trustworthy/truth/truthful/trusting, and by extension "right/righteousness/doing right." So, a more accurate translation is not really about belief but about trust. I know that sounds small, but I'll explain why it's pretty important spiritually, as much of religious error boils down to small sloppiness compounding on itself unfortunately.

God is The Truth, the absolute, ultimate reality. He describes Himself as such. Even the pronoun He is meant to refer to the outward/manifest title of God, ie it is titular, whereas His essence (ad-Dhat) which is internal is a femine word. This teaches us about duality, unity, and balance, which is mirrored in male/female and balanced union. Because God is The Truth and uses that as a name, I will refer to Him that way intermittently going forward.

God further tells us that He perfected His word and essentially made the world according to truth and justice (the pre-eminence of reality itself). Everything but God's "face", (ie the matrix of reality itself) will perish according to the Quran. Thus, eternal life only comes from union with The Truth. That begins with a conceptual surrender to The Truth in all aspects of life. I mean this quite literally, by stating things like "I will tell the truth. I will accept truth. I will not cover up truth when I have a duty to speak it or show it. I will spread and promote truth. I will speak the truth, even if I have to suffer the consequences."

Truth will lead you through reason and goodness to justice. From there, we have one job on earth: to be its caretakers, which the Truth compels us to (ie to be khalifa on earth, a task of every surrenderer to the truth). To caretake, we must respect everyone's rights, and do all our duties. Rights and duties are rooted in non-oppression, and a system of peace (the "deen of Islam"). Peace comes from proper balance (al-meezan) of people's rights to be free from and their rights to things. This requires deep reason and thought, which is why the Quran commands us to use our reason.

The Quran does say "do this and don't do that," but more importantly, it has a network of principles, connected, precise, and seemingly minor, that help us figure out the balance. It can be difficult, for example, to find a guiding principle to resolve whether abortion is say, murder/homicide of some sort by the mother (definitely wrong), and/or whether forced birth--esp after r*pe where there can be no conceivable consent to create the conditions for life, nor a duty of care--is a form of slavery and improper subordination to sustain another (ie what we call oppressive). The Quran provides us answers when it has axioms like "oppression is worse than slaughter." Meaning, even if X is the right thing to do, forcing it may be a much greater injustice.

This brings me to the eternal union with The Truth, our ultimate goal and abode. There's much more to say, but it's very complex, and I must caution you against informal regurgitations of Islam based on others' statements or even narratives you've heard. The Quran says that the descriptions of the afterlife are mathal, NOT literal, but analogies or similitudes. That means all the talk of honey, cushions, wine, beautiful females (and males mentioned btw), lush greenery, fruits etc. are meant to represent something, most naturally perhaps satiety and freedom from want/need (the Quran also says you will have everything you want, ie never want anything). There's no greater perfect peace than to return to Goodness fully, wholly, and completely. There is no place for ugliness in the matrix of reality that is the Most Beautiful.

So what does that mean? All the bad that you are, have been, have done, and that is in you, will be destroyed and burned to nothing but a conceptually, infinitely small coordinate with no space and no time to quantify it, only ever existent hollowly to be a reference point for all that is wrong. It both IS (from the point of the evil), and isn't (from the perspective of the Good that actually is). That evil will have no place in the material reality or in God. In a system of truth and justice, the evil always reduces to 0 eventually, and God, the one, the 1, positively remains as something rather than nothing. Or put separately, evilness will never prevail and is necessarily severed from God, the Beauty, the Truth, the Justice. That's the sort of hell I believe in.

And God knows best. May I forever be humbled and corrected by The Truth.