I don’t see any mention of calculating the direction to Mecca:
Do you have a citation for that?
If you’re facing Mecca, doesn’t that also mean you’re mooning Mecca since it’s widely accepted that the Earth is a sphere?
Of course a decent argument could be made that the Islamic Golden Age was simply due to the introduction of cheap paper and anyplace with that is going to advance all sciences fairly well.
Fair enough - you’re drawing a line between science fiction and “sci-fi”, and I understand the distinction, and would put the authors mentioned above on the same side of the line as you do. 
Yeah. Easy as p.
Unless you are exactly opposite Mecca on the globe, you are always more facing than mooning so the mooning gets canceled out. Plus there is the matter of intention.
Ok. Although by sci-fi I did mean the heavey hitters of print. In fact, this thread was inspired by just having read “Halo” by Charles Stross. Maybe not a heavy hitter yet, but well on his way there if I go by what little I have read of him.
Has there been any mention of muslims in space on pop sci-fi (movies, tv, comics, etc)?
Maybe, Sage Rat, but I find that a little strained. The argument appears to be that mathematics advanced during the time of medieval Islam because it was necessary for the calculation of various Islamic ceremonis. Maybe it went the other way. Because the math had been developed, it was possible for the Islamic-related calculations to be made. It’s hard to say what influenced what in such periods.
I guess Muslims in space would have similar problems to Jews in space.
I once wrote to a rabbi, asking a bunch of questions about observing Judaism in space. I remember him saying that in space you pray towards earth in general, and that you pray according to the clocks on the spaceship. I don’t think I got an answer to “What arm would a four-armed Martian use to put on tefillin?”, though.