Many (most?) churches of the Jesus variant of Sky Daddy believers point generally eastward - it’s where the word orientation (I.e. The Orient / east) comes from. Gives people somewhere tangible to focus - and is also where the sun rises. Gets full use out of those beautiful windows to point towards sunrise and/or sunset.

Organization purposes. The entire purpose of religion is to organize people under a common belief. If everyone prays to random directions, its all chaos. Religion is all about maintaining order. It might not make sense now we all live in very sophisticated, organized societies, but we came from anarchy, and religion is derived from the fear of said anarchy. All civilizations have had some form of religion in common.

Islam came from a very tribal, disorganized place where everyone pretty much did as they pleased, especially the stronger. And so Islam has rules for everything to avoid specifically that.

Most religious folk I know seem to presume the divine authorities are reasonable, at least to them. (There's a propensity to assume that other groups, whether different religions, different races or foreigners from other countries are intrinsically evil, like goblins or Klingons or something.) It seems that most worries over sin and Hellfire and such come from ministries and apologists looking to gin up more contrition, which in the case of Christianity leads to more church attendance and tithing.

Typically, it's when religion is invoked in social conflicts (often domestic ones) that nucleate religious identity crises. We hear about it a lot in LGBT+ cases, but it happens often enough with cis-het teens looking to establish identity separate from their parents. Hence a lot of apology is directed towards teens coming of age.

I don't know how it works with Imams and mosques, but during the Mahsa Amini protests, Imams were the targets of outrage, with araqchin tipping (that is sneaking up and knocking his cap off his head) being a common act of defiance. It was big news when it was revealed the Iranian SLA and assembly kept their families abroad in western states, and didn't force them to adhere to the same strict customs they commanded of Iranians.