The salience of religion around the world seems to negate the "secularization thesis" the idea that religion would become obsolete as societies modernized. The power of religion to motivate political and social action has received particular attention among Muslim populations. In Muslim majority societies, the state has played a significant role in shaping the religious arena, yet existing research tends to focus on Islamists and on Islamization as a grassroots phenomenon. This panel focuses instead on state actions, responding to the call to "bring the state back in" to the study of Islam and politics. As a component of state-building, newly modernizing Muslim states absorbed religious institutions such as schools, mosques, and universities that were historically financed through independent religious endowments. In the process, the state became responsible for the production of religious education, the administration of religious spaces, and the regulation of religious discourse. In the present context of "radical Islamic terrorism" the state uses its control of these and other institutions to increasingly impose a specific version of permitted religious practice. The condoned form of official Islam is often framed in reference to historic practices and beliefs specific to the national territory in question, and tends to emphasize the ways in which the local practice of Islam is "moderate" or "tolerant" in contrast to interpretations of Islam linked with violence, which the state labels as "foreign" and "inauthentic." In the process, independent religious practice is increasingly framed as a threat to security, and suppressed. The papers compare efforts by different states to promote the condoned form of Islam, whether through the promotion of "moderate Islam," the production and regulation of religious space through mosque building, or state efforts to redefine the condoned form of Islam. The panel's scope extends outside the Arab Middle East to consider patterns of state regulation of Islam in Turkey and Azerbaijan, both contexts that underwent forceful secularization and are currently experiencing a resurgence in the salience of Islam. The panel is motivated by questions about the subordination of religion to state goals, and the effect this has on individuals' perception of legitimate interpretations of the faith.