Early Anglo patronage of Muslim Africans served commercial, not religious or abolitionist, ends.

Evidence

Job’s relationship with his Anglo sponsors was an important precursor to Americans’ later patronage of certain Muslim Americans. It helps to identify the differing interests that shaped Anglo and later Anglo-American interactions with the Muslim other in the colonial versus antebellum eras. Job’s return to Africa was not made conditional on his promise to convert the “heathen” to Christianity nor was it explained as an expression of antislavery sentiment. Neither Job nor his sponsors seemed to oppose slavery. His return to Africa, like that of later Muslim Americans, was seen instead as having potential economic benefit through the establishment of trade networks. Job’s repatriation served the interests of those merchants who wished to develop English-speaking native agents in West Africa, and in so doing, anticipated a larger trend in the antebellum United States. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 361

Categorization

• XREF: Picks up the same analytical question guiding the whole volume: what interest does the patronizing power serve by tolerating or using the Muslim other?