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Why does Islam reject other religions.

Q:

My Hindu friend was looking into Islam and posed a question which I cannot answer. He may have accepted Islam before except he has now vehemently rejected it on this basis of this question. As a Hindu, he believes all paths lead to God. So if you’re a Christian, Muslim, Jain, Hindu, etc, you are still on the path to enlightenment as you are trying to feel the Creator’s presence irregardless of which path you take. He says that if you (Muslim) haven’t seen the Creator yourself and neither have I (Hindu), but you feel Him within your heart when you pray, and so do I when I pray in a different way, how can you say that you are right and I am wrong. He believes it’s ok to say that this path (Islam) is the right path and be content with that, but he thinks Islam belittles other faiths by calling them “the wrong path”, and he calls that a “bullying tactic”. When I told him that in order for a path to be “right”, others cannot all be right too, he asked why Islam treats non Muslims badly though and thinks of them as worse than slaves “…and certainly a believing slave is better than an idolater…” (2:221) and that all non Muslims are damned to hell, even if they were good people who may even have been more religious than most Muslims. He thinks that creating this “us and them” mentality adds to the divisions and ostricization of people in our world, especially when it doesn’t allow people to marry out of their faith. I don’t know what to tell him. Could you please help?

A: