OTL history question: why did (some) US Civil Rights leaders turn to Islam?

Islam was founded by Arabs, not black people, and the civilization that originated from it has kind of a bad track record when it comes to treating black people as equals - some Islamic leaders during the first half of the 20th century were on good terms with the genocidal Fascist regimes of Europe, too.

Despite this, Islam - and several heretical and heterodox black supremacist spins on it - was quite popular among the more radical elements of the Civil Rights movement. Why Islam, and not one of the native religions of Africa (especially West Africa), one of the syncretistic religions of the Caribbean, or even one of the homegrown Christian denominations like the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church?

It's kind of weird how people fighting against modern forms of slavery had a collective hard on for a faith whose leaders looked down on them as inferior for centuries.
 
I'm not sure I should even entertain the question, because honestly, it leans pretty heavily on Islamophobia and seems more than a little ignorant on the topic of Islam as a religion.
But, none the less, let me do my best to answer this in as level-headed a manner as I can.

Islam was/is popular among African-American Civil Rights activists due to the fact that Islam is an extremely prominent religion in Africa. Many of the African slaves brought to the US were from regions where Islam was widespread, and in a sense, "native". I think you forget (at least) one great West African Muslim, Mansa Musa. Additionally, those people brought as slaves then had their religions stripped from them by their masters. Some were tolerant, of course, but it was common practice to force enslaved peoples to convert to Christianity. It's not hard to see why some "radical" elements of the Civil Rights Movement would want to embrace Islam, in rejection of this forced mass conversion.

Besides this, Islam doesn't have some kind of a monopoly on tolerating bad things. Slavery's been defended fervently by Muslims and Christians alike, and white supremacist, racist ideology is intertwined heavily with the Christianity of the West. The Bible was used as a primary defense of slavery for Confederates, and used to support the claim that blacks were inferior. Whereas Malcolm X, one of the Civil Rights icons you describe as "having a hard on" for Islam, was moderated by the racial diversity and tolerance he saw in Mecca. Muslims of all different races, from all around the world, assembled together, made him question his belief that blacks and whites couldn't live in an integrated society. This isn't to say that Islam is perfect, because it's been used to justify equally bad things over its history. But painting it as somehow infinitely worse than Christianity (or any other religion, for that matter) is inaccurate.

I hope I explained this somewhat okay. There's a lot more to it than what I've said, but that's the basic idea.
 
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