Two news items from the noisiest and most explosive of the desert monotheisms:
1. In Malaysia, Muslim men wearing silk is a sign of the apocalypse. (There is a connection here to the reason that there is no Muslim liturgical music—except for that of the Sufis, and they are heretics.)
2. Also, a fatwa from the UAE: Muslims are not allowed to go to Mars. Not that it’s possible anyway — there are huge psychological and physiological issues to be dealt with — but if it were, Muslims could not do it, these imams say.
It must be tough to be a Muslim science-fiction writer.
Oy! Strangely enough, I was wondering just last week which way a Muslim would bow when they pray if they were on Mars. After all, they have to bow to Mecca, and Mecca would now be 173.2 million miles (on average) away. So they would have to know precisely in which direction Earth is at all times.
I do remember once reading an (infidel) science-fiction story in which a Muslim crewman on a small spaceship always consulted with the astrogator to learn in which direction Earth lay, so that he could place his prayer rug appropriately.
That was in 3-D space, not hyperspace — whatever hyperspace is.