Tarik Shah (January 24, 1963) is an African American Muslim with a career as a professional jazz musician. As the sole student of Slam Stewart, Shah began playing the upright bass at age 12 and went on to play with Betty Carter, Ahmad Jamal, Abbey Lincoln and Art Taylor among others. He is a composer, a jazz educator, and lyricist. An expert in martial arts, he was accused and eventually charged in 2005 with providing aid for terrorist activity based on evidence from an FBI sting. When he was arrested in May of 2005 at the age of 42 in New York City, initially pleading not guilty to all charges, he accepted a plea agreement for 15 years in prison and was held in solitary confinement for 31 months.
According to the complaint, both also made a formal oath of loyalty, called a bayat, to Al Qaeda in a meeting with an undercover F.B.I. agent that was secretly recorded. An indictment handed up by a federal grand jury Monday accused the men of conspiring to provide material support for terrorism, specifically for Al Qaeda. It was less than a page long and added no details.
in 2007, Reuters reported that Shah pled guilty to "one count of conspiring to support al Qaeda. In exchange, prosecutors dropped one of the terrorism charges against him."
The undercover FBI agent (or informant) who targeted Shah became the subject of the 2015 film (T)ERROR, winner of a Sundance Special Jury Prize for Breakout First Feature Film in 2015, which won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Documentary in 2017.