Ali joined the Elijah Muhammad/Wallace Fard Muhammad brand of Islam.....attending those weirdo sessions where they taught a distinctive form of Islam to members of the city's African-American population.
there had sprung an even more militant branch than the Nation of Islam itself. This new movement, known as the Temple People, identifies the prophet, Mr. W.D. Fard, with the god Allah. To Mr. Fard alone did they offer prayer and sacrifice. Since Mr. Fard has been deified, the Temple People raise to the rank of prophet the former Minister of Islam, Elijah Mohammed of Chicago. He is always referred to reverently as the ‘Prophet Elijah in Chicago'.

When Malcolm X went to perform hajj in Mecca, he realized how wrong this NOI branch was----they thought up until then that only black people were Muslims. He saw white Muslims and Chinese Muslims and Turks and Bosnian Muslims in Mecca, and it blew his mind.

Ali realized years later that he had bought into a bunch of racist pro-black NOI BULLSHIT.