I am afraid some of us have got a wrong impression of religion. If you have a problem with the word 'religion' (for Marx's superhit comment "Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions."---Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right) you can replace the word with faith (more appropriate to use as Asians).
RELIGION STRENGTHENS PEOPLE, INJECTS HOPE AND POWER INTO THEM; AND DOES NOT WEAKEN THEM. ALSO, IT UNITES PEOPLE. History gives testimony to this. It was only after Christ came and got crucified that Israel's resurrection was possible...they were no longer slaves of the Romans. It was only after Prophet Mohammed was born and preached His beautiful religion that Arab tribes were unified and stopped self-destruction by internal trifles and was elevated to the glory of one of the most learned races of this planet...human endeavor in every sphere of activity flourished there. Long before them, Buddha came and preached a faith so powerful that Vedic Religion got back its life after it became lifeless with sacrificial rites. And only after Raja Rammohan Roy and Sri Ramkrishna Dev reformed Sanatana Dharma that Bengal's Renaissance followed; produced figures like Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath, Keshav Sen, Mahatma Ashwinikumar Dutta, Gandhi et al. Please do not confound the power and purity of religion with what Humans made it look like. That would only be false interpretation or "sotyer opolaap"!
