The Class Oriented Rationale: Uncovering the Sources of the Syrian Civil War Badr Eddin Rahimah Georgetown University T he Syrian revolt of 2011 against the Assad regime has evolved into a fiery-armed civil war. Syria has also become a hub for external involvement and political med- dling. The ensuing crisis has been largely understood as being motivated by staunch sectarianism. However, the insistence that the bases of the armed Syrian conflict are grounded in sectarian origins reduces this ongoing phenomenon to visible deriva- tions of the deeper structural causes of the conflict. Moving away from the common and simplistic focus on sectarianism, this work sets to demonstrate that the root of the ongoing Syrian Civil War is a class conflict disguised under a complex layer of pseudo- sectarianism. Understanding the ‘true’ nature of the Syrian Civil War requires an approach which escapes false assumptions that are associated with the present-day Syrian crisis. The perspective put forth critiques the analyses which assume that sectarianism is the primary causing factor of the ongoing Syrian civil war. Instead, this work argues that the conflict is an economic one, but is rationalized through a sectarian prism by both observers and participants in the ongoing civil war. The discussion here looks at the domestic side of the Syrian conflict. In order to bring to the fore the root of the ensuing conflict, this paper will not address clich ed focuses which are often advertised as being the primary igniters and sustaining agents of the ongoing civil war, these being; external involvement, proxy wars and international politi- cal interests, and investment or involvement in Syria. This work is also not concerned with the influx of non-Syrian fighters who decided to join the war, as they were a by- product of the war, and not a primary, instigating cause. Instead, the focus of this article will be to unravel how Syrian society transformed from being ‘non-violent’ and ‘tolerant of difference’ in the domestic sphere, to the state of armed-infighting chaos. While relying on historical references, this article is neither concerned with restating the chronology of events before and after 2011, nor with relating events with an assumed causality between them. Rather, the purpose is to analyse the conflict in a constructive way which allows a new analytical paradigm to crystalize. Unfortunately, recent V C 2016 Hartford Seminary. DOI: 10.1111/muwo.12131 169