Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in war-torn Syria and Lebanon, this paper shows that ordinary people before and throughout the war lived their sect identities through a sense of “security and safety,” and changes therein resulted in a shift in ordinary Syrians’ sect habitus in Bourdieu’s parlance. This paper argues that sect identities are dynamic and in this case are shaped by a sense of security and safety. For example, when military operations overtook the opposition’s peaceful demonstrations, the sense of “security and safety” led some opposition activists and demonstrators to retreat and try to go back to “normal,” and led others to join the Syrian army after sectarian clashes emerged in various places, and even led others who identify as secularist atheists to accept living under Al-Qaeda territories. Different experiences of security and safety in different regions and for different groups and individuals gave new meanings to sect identities which in turn are shaping the struggle in different ways at the popular level. Attention to these dynamics allows us to see how sect identities take on new meanings before, during, and post-war.