The author attempts to analyze the social conflict in Mindanao to probe why the internecine conflict involving Muslims and Christians occurred in the early seventies. This is done by referring to the concept of social strain as a theoretical insight, quite similar to the model of frustration and aggression. Two specific, though conceptually independent, hypotheses are formulated consistent with the tension argument. The first invokes a deprived concept based on relative deprivation while the second is relative displacement. Both are taken as a strain or frustration, provoking instances, which in turn lead men into violent conflicts.