The Sectarianization of the Syrian Conflict: The Salience of Authoritarianism over Theology In his critically acclaimed book, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future, Vali Nasr has suggested that traditional concepts and categories used to explicate the Middle East, such as modernity, democracy, fundamentalism and nationalism, no longer adequately explain the politics of the region. It “is rather the old feud between Shias and Sunnis that forges attitudes, defines prejudices, draws political boundary lines, and even decides whether and to what extent those other trends have relevance.” In keeping with this argument, President Obama has on numerous occasions invoked the phrase “ancient sectarian differences” to explain the turmoil and conflict in the Arab-Islamic world today, Syria in particular. This raises the question: how salient is the variable of sectarianism in explaining conflict between Shias and Sunnis today in the Middle East? Rejecting a primordialist paradigm of “ancient sectarian hatreds” this paper locates the roots of sectarian conflict in late twentieth century and not in the seventh century. More specifically, the political context that illuminates the question of sectarianism is the persistence of authoritarianism – as the dominant feature of the politics of the Middle East – and the crisis of legitimacy facing ruling regimes that has followed as a consequence. The political mobilization and manipulation of sectarian identities, it will be argued, is a key strategy for regime survival and it is within this framework that the question of sectarianism can be better understood. Drawing on the literature of religious mobilization and the literature in international relations theory (that explains the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran), the question of sectarianism will be analyzed in the context of Syria post-2011. It will be argued sectarian identities were deliberately politicized and cultivated by state actors both domestically (Assad) and regionally (Iran and Saudi Arabia) to advance the narrow political agendas of ruling elites. How this process manifested itself and took shape will be examined in this paper.