Creativity Quote by Julian Casablancas

Casablancas frames religion as an instrument, not an engine: a guitar that can play a lullaby or a weaponized riff, depending on who’s holding it. The line is built like a defense and an accusation at once. By saying religion is "never the problem", he refuses the easy, internet-ready take that faith itself is inherently toxic. Then he pivots hard: the real villain is ambition dressed up in holiness. That snap turn is the point; it lets him indict institutions without insulting believers who experience religion as solace, community, or meaning.

The subtext is about misdirection. Power doesn’t like to look like power, so it borrows the aura of the sacred to appear inevitable, morally clean, beyond debate. "People who use it" is deliberately vague, a catch-all for politicians, clergy, cultural gatekeepers, even artists who sell certainty as a brand. Casablancas is naming a familiar pattern: when the language of transcendence gets repurposed as a management tool for fear, obedience, and identity.

As a musician associated with post-9/11 New York and an era when politics, media, and culture blurred into spectacle, he’s also speaking from inside a world of branding. The critique lands because it’s not abstract theology; it’s about the mechanics of influence. Religion becomes a mirror held up to every system that claims purity while quietly negotiating control.