In this talk, Dominik Müller will present the conceptual framework of a newly established collaborative research project studying “The Bureaucratisation of Islam and its Socio-Legal Dimensions in Southeast Asia”. It investigates contemporary dynamics of Islamic bureaucratisation with an analytic focus on the state’s exercise of classificatory power and its workings on the micro-level. The project views the bureaucratisation of Islam in Southeast Asia not just as an empirical fact to be examined in singular national contexts, but aims at theorising its underlying patterns from a comparative perspective.