Working people up into a frenzy and giving them targets to assault is a time honored way to rise to power.

Statues don’t fight back. Real trouble is when you run out of statues.

Certainly yes, but its not historic if it was done in their time is it? I mean Islam has been around for 1400 years, this could have been done ages ago when the church was relatively new - also I believe most of those churches were converted to mosques (Muslim prayer place) which would justify some re-configuration for their usage. This is taking into account that this was their land/property, anything else would be going out of line, exceptions could be made of course for how offensive something is.