Job was a religious man whose devotions, fasting, temperance, and food preparations—he butchered his own meat in order to make it halal , or permissible—were seen as noble by his English hosts. He was an excellent conversation partner who refused to convert to Christianity, despite reading the New Testament in Arabic. Job challenged the doctrine of Trinity, observing that the word “trinity” was not included in the New Testament and expressed his concern that his English brothers and sisters were being led to engage in shirk , the association of anything with the one God. Job insisted that God was not three in number but one; even Prophet Jesus, who was born of a virgin and who performed miracles, was not God, he said. If his English sponsors were disappointed by Job's refusal to convert to Christianity, their disappointment was not recorded by Thomas Bluett, Job's biographer. Bluett was happy to note, however, that Job was especially critical of the English Protestants' political and religious rivals, the Roman Catholics, whose African missionaries practiced idolatry, he argued.

QUESTION: Job's story suggests early encounters where African Muslims challenged Christian doctrine to Western audiences — worth tracing his actual biography for more. XREF: Connects to the broader history of Muslim-Christian interreligious debate and the early Atlantic slave era.

Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ Th…, loc. 358