Muhammad Surur Zayn al-ʿAbidin, a noted Syrian ideologue and founder of an eponymous Islamist movement, went through many stages before reaching his distinctive synthesis: blending the political awareness of the Muslim Brotherhood with the religious thought of the Wahhabis and creating an influential Islamic trend in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world. The paper examines the development of Surūr’s thought and its ideological framework. His outlook on Islam was shaped primarily by teachers who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, and early experiences in the ranks of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood shaped his political awareness and commitment to organization and planning. The rise of national secular parties and the political polarization of the 1950s also comprised decisive factors in forming his ideological convictions. Examining the early period of Surur’s life is crucial to understanding his subsequent career, as it shaped his Islamic path, political awareness, and political and organizational experience. Furthermore, the paper details the fine-grained distinctions between the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the most popular trend in political Islam, and political Salafists. Although both groups are categorized as Islamists, pursue the same goals, and have considerable interactions, they nevertheless diverge in terms of theology and praxis. The paper, therefore, explains some of the most important theological and ideological distinctions between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists. Particularly, Surūr criticized the Muslim Brotherhood’s focus on politics at the expense of religious knowledge (ʿilm), thus spurning centralization and a hierarchic organizational structure for his group. To shed light on his early life and ideological shifts, we will examine Surur’s writings in his magazine al-Sunnah, where he penned a series of articles talking about his experiences in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood ranks, his embrace of Salafi ideology, and his activism in Saudi Arabia. “Murajaʿat,” (Revisions), a series of seven recorded interviews with Surur on the Al-Hiwar channel, also offers further details of various aspects of his journey.