We want the Americans to leave the holy cities".
But the government has previously defended its expansion plans for the two holy cities as necessary.
This is true even, indeed especially, in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo in 2005 recommended bombing Muslim holy cities including Mecca.
Their patronage of the rulers of the holy cities of Arabia, Mecca and Medina, served the same purpose.
Religious tourists will flock to see where Job and Jonas died, or to the Muslim holy cities Najaf and Karbala.
And what money the Shiite holy cities earned from pilgrimages was mostly confiscated by the Baathist regime.
The holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem, are all known as harem-i şerif ("noble sanctuary").
Ujjayini, one of the seven holy cities of the Hindus, renowned for its beauty and wealth, became a centre of early Buddhism and of Jainism.
Some years later he went to Damascus and the holy cities of Palestine, thus further widening his knowledge of the eastern Arab world.
On its banks is Varanasi, one of seven holy cities, which itself is guarded by 56 shrines to Ganesha, the popular elephant-headed god.
