Salam alaykum
I tried reading through all of this, and even though I understand what each is saying, the answer is still a little confusing to me.
I seperated everything into 3 different questions to help make things easier.
1)Do Jews and Christians make it to heaven? (looking for a simple "yes" or "no" to help with confusion lol).
2)If a Jew or Christian firmly believes in God, and that there is only one God and recognizes Muhammed(pbuh) ( as well as many others) as his prophet, what then would seperate him from a Muslim and stop him from entering heaven?
3)Also...what about someone who is neither christian, nor jew, nor muslim. This is far fetched, but bare with me for the example:
What if someone grew up on an island all by themselves, without having anything. No books, no communication with others, not a single thing. How would he know to praise God? Without the Quran, he wouldnt. He wouldnt even know what religion was, let alone which one was correct. Would he get into heaven?It is not his fault he did not know God - he had no one to teach him of God and no way of finding out.