"I believe more strongly now that God is almighty. If God wants to take it all back, he will do it in a second," says the 38-year-old from Indonesia's Banda Aceh, one of the regions hardest hit by the killer waves.

"I am not angry at God. This was our fate, our destiny," he says. "All the things we have belong to God. If we have faith, we will be able to survive."

Humankind has always turned to religion at times of trial and tribulation, looking for solace in the face of great suffering.

Even though the almost unimaginable scope of the catastrophe -- more than 220,000 dead, millions left homeless -- might have challenged even the most fervent believers, most of the faithful say their belief has not been shaken.

"When there is a disaster, the feeling among the community is that it is like a trial from God," says Muhammad Adli Abdullah, who has been working with a group that helps coordinate aid for Aceh's devastated fishing villages.

"They still believe this. They had a channel to recover from their trauma, through their religion," he says. "Some people are more pious than before. More people are going to mosques."

The catastrophe did not play favourites, pounding Buddhist Thailand, devastating Muslim Aceh, and wiping out Hindu villages in Sri Lanka. Christian and Jewish tourists were listed among the dead.

Suwatchai Pongnaram, 34, converted from Buddhism after Christian volunteers came to his impoverished Thai village of Baan Nam Khem to help locals rebuild their fishing boats and regain some order in their lives.

"After the tsunami, many people converted," he says. "They lost family, lost relatives, lost friends. They hurt so much."

Even among those who did not convert, many had a sense of shared faith -- a belief in a higher power that went beyond individual religions.

When the storm hit India, N. Upendra took refuge in a church in his town of Velankanni.

"Even though my religion is Hinduism, I felt safe in the church," he says. "I used to pray every day like the Christians do. We all prayed to God to give us the strength to overcome the difficulties ahead."

Athuraliya Ratana, a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka, says the scope of the disaster reminded people of the essential transience of life, of how anything here today could literally be gone tomorrow.

"I think people are now more detached from worldly things. People who never went to temple before are now turning to the dharma (Buddhist teachings)," he says.

"Tragedy of this magnitude has not been experienced by our people before, but it also helped to realise the concept of impermanence," he says.

"It was the best test He could have given me," says Mohammad Subhan Rosman, a 25-year-old postal worker from Banda Aceh who lost five of his closest relatives. "I became closer to my god. I pray more now."

Not everyone's belief in God emerged from the disaster unscathed, however.

"Even after nearly a year, we still get those affected, asking us why God couldn't have prevented it," says Nimal Mendis, the reverend of a Methodist church in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital.

"People's faith still seems shaken by the experience," he says.

But across south Asia, where devastated communities are desperately struggling to rebuild one year later, the doubters seem to be well out-numbered.

"When you live through a disaster of this scale, you have no questions whether God exists or not," says Hamid Marakar, a Muslim still living in a temporary shelter in Sri Lanka.

"Our holy book says a time will come when the earth shakes and people will have to pay for their sins. It has happened," Marakar says. "The tragedy has definitely brought me closer to Allah."

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