Religious icons, unharmed and still coloured brightly, continually catch the eye as one picks one's way through the island's debris-scarred landscapes. Hand of God or sheer coincidence?

The answer, usually one or the other, depends on whether one asks the question of a devotee -- not hard to find in this religious country of 19 million people -- or a sceptic.

What is indisputable is that the Methodist church in Akkaraipattu, in Sri Lanka's devastated eastern Ampara district, is still standing while the houses around it lie smashed to pieces.

A Buddhist temple, complete with icons, stands little touched amid apocalyptic scenes in Matara, further south.

In Kalmunai, also in Ampara district, a mosque is unscathed while more than 200 houses lie in ruins around it, the bodies of 1,500 of those who once lived in them now lying in a mass grave nearby.

Numerous other examples are to be found along Sri Lanka's battered coasts.

A statute of the Virgin Mary stands on the beachfront in devastated Mullaitivu town in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam-controlled northeast; an image of the Hindu goddess durga lies intact among the debris at Point Pedro, Sri Lanka's northernmost point.

Along the west coast, a statue of the Buddha sits perched on the only intact crossbeam of a devastated house at Thelwatta, just 50 metres (yards) from the wreckage of a train tossed about by the waves like a toy.

And in Matara, Christians celebrated the return of a statue of the Virgin Mary cradling the infant Jesus that disappeared during the tsunami only to be found days later unscathed.

In the island in which around 70 percent of the population is Buddhist, 15 percent is Hindu, 7.5 percent is Muslim and 7.5 percent is Christian, the "hand of God" theory holds sway.

"I believe there are gods who protect this country. So there is a reason behind these places being protected from the tsunami," said Buddhist monk Rekawa Pangnajeewa, whose temple withstood the fury of the waves in the southeastern town of Hambantota.

Another monk, Kudawelle Nandasiri, who was battered about by the waves in the southern town of Galle, believes he was saved, "Because I always meditate under a Bo tree."

Locals in a Muslim village near the eastern town of Batticaloa, speak in awe of a madrassa -- an Islamic religious school -- which was left untouched while 400 houses around were flattened with great loss of life.

"It is the hand of Allah," said a Muslim cleric.

A Christian fisherman in Akkaraipattu, A. Navaneru, believes that had his wife and three children made it to the Methodist church on December 26 they would have been saved.

"All those who got to the church survived. God looked after them." His loved ones, however, were still metres (yards) from the doors of the sanctuary when the waves flooded over them.

A Methodist priest in Colombo, Father Anura Perera, said he didn't believe icons or religious buildings had been specially protected and that in fact many of these had indeed been swallowed by the waves.

"People always seek these type of superstitions but we don't believe these things," Perera said. "In fact, I would be very happy if the statues had been destroyed and the people had survived."

Army chaplain Jim Harwick deployed with a Canadian military contingent in Ampara had a more rational theory for why some places of religious worship may have been spared.

"Devotees tend to put a lot of money and effort into their holy places. They build them sturdier -- they lay proper foundations and use more concrete," he said.

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