The thesis uses both interpretive and comparative analysis to explain why conflicts involving confessional minorities still occur in the contemporary age of secular nation states. Arguably, these conflicts reflect political relations involving nation states, political leaders and various communities. This is one of the reasons why the secularisation hypothesis does not hold in many states in today's world

The thesis focuses on five cases taken from the post-Ottoman space -the traditional zone of contact between Christianity and Islam - the Copts, the Palestinian Christians, the Pomaks and the Lebanese and Bosnian communities. The major issues analysed in the thesis are the reasons for communal mobilisation for conflict, the collective use of violence and the new problems in international security, related to communal conflicts