Jomo Kenyatta while an Irish Muslim friend had unsuccessfully urged Kenyatta to convert to Islam. During his imprisonment, Kenyatta read up on Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism through books supplied to him by Stock. The Israeli diplomat Asher Naim visited him in this period, noting that although Kenyatta was "not a religious man, he was appreciative of the Bible". Despite portraying himself as a Christian, he found the attitudes of many European missionaries intolerable, in particular their readiness to see everything African as evil. In "Facing Mount Kenya", he challenged the missionaries' dismissive attitude toward ancestor veneration, which he instead preferred to
Jomo Kenyatta manners" and a flexible attitude in adapting to urban situations dissimilar to the lands he had grown up in. A. R. Barlow, a member of the Church of Scotland Mission at Kikuyu, met with Kenyatta in Britain, later relating that he was impressed by how Kenyatta could "mix on equal terms with Europeans and to hold his end up in spite of his handicaps, educationally and socially." The South African Peter Abrahams met Kenyatta in London, noting that of all the black men involved in the city's Pan-Africanist movement, he was "the most relaxed, sophisticated and 'westernized' of the lot