Who says a religion has to be either moral or redeeming?
Because of the prevalence of Christian thought, people have become biased to the idea that a religion has to have these aspects, to somehow mirror Christianity in some fashion. We might talk about Buddhism that way, for example. It at least seems to have elevated lives on earth, whatever their eternal destination might still be.
But Buddhism (and its predecessor, Hinduism) may have had a mysterious touch from the God of Abraham, having managed to syncretize it after having heard about it. And so we see the concept of a benevolent supreme deity, called Brahman.
Islam’s Allah most definitely is malevolent. He allows just enough room for his subjects to live a bit of a tolerable existence (or else they’d rebel and bolt on him) but otherwise encloses those subjects in spiritual chains. Little sins in the Islamic view require big-time penance.