War is religion by other means?

Jason Dormady, my co-administrator on the Mexican History/Historia Mexicana facebook page, is an assistant professor of history at Central Washington University where he teaches courses on Mexico, general Latin American topics, world history, and religion in Latin America.

His students are reading Inga Clendinnon’s “The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society” and have published their “reflections” on the religious meaning of warfare.  While Jihad and the Crusades are the most likely analogies we would make in the “west”, if one defines “religion” as any faith-based ideology (including free-market economics… Randifarians and Friedmanics seem to be about as prone to violence as any Marxist or Christian warrior or Jihadi) then the issue of how one expresses the “courage of our convictions” becomes much more complex.

That the Aztec world was seeped in religion (and violence) doesn’t seem all that remote to us…

Excellent reflections, and Dr. Domady and his students welcome comments on these reflections (The Ritual of Warfare: Blood for Paradise, Blood for Oil) posted on the always interesting Secret History: Reflections on Latin America.