This is a generally competent survey of a minority but significant element in the Muslim community of the United States. Takim reviews the history of the various ethnic groups in America that owe allegiance to Shi'ism, some of long standing such as the Lebanese, and others more recently arrived, from Iran, Iraq, the Indian subcontinent, and East Africa. He shows that the double minority status of Shi'is in America has led not to coalescence, as might have been expected, but to the accentuation of cultural differences; religious identity is expressed in tenaciously distinct cultural forms. Of particular interest is the author's frank discussion of the failure to integrate African American Shi'is – called by him, questionably in the opinion of this reviewer, “Black Shi'is” (206–7) – into any segment of the broader Shi'i community. He suggests that in the aftermath of 9/11 younger Shi'is in particular have become intent on developing a supra-ethnic “American identity” by engaging in civic and political activity (228–29). The net result has been, however, a proliferation of rival organizations and thus new forms of division. A further symptom of the will to assimilate is the importance given to “dialogue” with Christians and Jews, which is also a preoccupation of many Sunnis.

As for Shi'i relations with the Sunni majority of American Muslims, Takim chronicles instances of unity and rapprochement as well as cases of obstinate or even deliberate mutual distrust. His treatment of this delicate subject leaves something to be desired. His consistent equation of Salafism with Wahhabism is questionable, although common, and he fails to challenge the fantastic assertion made by a body styling itself grandiosely the Universal Muslim Association of America that a whole slew of Islamic organizations in America form “a very large Wahhabi empire” (127). Likewise, with respect to the creedal questions perennially at issue between Sunnis and Shi'is, Takim is sometimes in error. It is not true, for example, that Sunnis believe straightforwardly in predestination; the Ash'ari position to which Takim refers is far more complex (apart from which, it is highly unlikely that the great mass of Sunnis in North America should ever have heard of al-Ash'ari). Equally, Shi'i tradition does not espouse unbounded free will; authoritative for Shi'ism is the statement of Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq that situates the truth of this troublesome matter between the two extremes (217). Takim's assertion that Shi'i political theory “views all governments in the prolonged absence of the twelfth Imam to be illegitimate” (223) is, again, an oversimplification at best.

Takim is on much firmer ground when examining in detail the role of the maraji', the supreme authorities of Shi'i Islamic law that reside in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, in dispensing guidance on problems faced by their followers in the United States, living as they do in an overwhelmingly non-Muslim society (chapter 4, “Shi'i Leadership and America”). He reviews an interesting variety of opinions on matters as diverse as permissible and impermissible types of music, the evidentiary value of DNA, the ritual purity or impurity of non-Muslims, artifical insemination, and euthanasia. The opinions reflect different methodological choices on the part of the maraji' and thus have a broad significance that transcends the American context.

In sum, a useful book, an original contribution to the burgeoning literature on Islam in America.