Muhammad Surur Zayn al-?Abidin, a noted Syrian ideologue and founder of an eponymous Islamist movement, distinguished himself through extensive anti-Shi?a views from the 1980s through the 2000s. Through a close reading of Surur’s influential work Wa ja?a dawr al-Majus [Then Came the Turn of Majus (Zoroastrians)], this paper will help illuminate the intersection of theological polemics, ethnic chauvinism, and state competition driving sectarian conflict across then the Middle East. While anti-Shi’i rhetoric was certainly not unique to Surur, his specific emphasis on ethnic and political dimensions of the sectarian divide played a significant role in modernizing and popularizing such sentiments. He was one of the early polemicists who criticized the Iranian Revolution and warned against the threat of Shi?a domination of the Middle East. Years before the Iranian Revolution, Surur developed firm anti-Shi?a convictions that would provide the basis for his 1981 book Wa ja?a dawr al-Majus. This work epitomized Surur’s synthesis of theological and ethnic denunciations, particularly with its discussion of how Persians betrayed the Islamic state from the early period of Islam to the modern day and provided the impetus for many uprisings and heretical groups. Along with the Wahhabi and Salafi anti-Shi?a sentiments, Surur also condemned the alliance of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the Alawi Syrian regime and thus articulated a more political version of anti-Shi?ism. The repression of the Muslim Brotherhood by the government in his homeland of Syria clearly informed this anti-Shi?a treatise and contributed to special criticism of Syria’s Nusayris (?Alawis). Geopolitics and great power competition continually appear in the text, as Surur argued that the Iranians, like their Persian ancestors, had national ambitions in the neighboring Arab countries and sought to control the region with the help of the Arab Shi?a, who were seen by Surur as a “fifth column.” Moreover, Surur understood Khomeini’s desire to export the Islamic Revolution through this political and ethnic lens as an attempt by Persian rafidas’ to overthrow political regimes on the other side of the Gulf and create Shi?i-dominated states.