Traveling to Shrines to Call Their People to the Truth

Question:
Your Eminence the Shaykh! This questioner mentions a doubt and asks: Is it permissible to visit mosques that contain graves in order to visit these deceased people and make supplication for them?

Answer:
As for visiting them to make supplication for them and seek mercy for them, the sin is on others; there is no harm in visiting them and making supplication for them. However, it should be pointed out that this is wrong, and that burying them in mosques is not permissible. As for visiting them, it is like visiting [the Prophet’s grave]; one makes supplication for them for forgiveness and mercy. But their relatives should be advised to exhume them and move them away from the mosques to the cemeteries. Their kin should be advised to do this. [The Prophet] used to visit the grave of a deceased woman and the graves of his two companions, and he is now in the mosque, inside the mosque. He enters his house in the mosque for the purpose of the lawful visit. But it is obligatory for the one who placed the deceased in the grave to remove him, and to move him away from the mosque, and to place him with the people of the graves. He is to be kept with the people of the graves and not left in the mosque. It is obligatory for his awliya (close friends of Allah), the one in authority, and the responsible officials to remove him from the mosque and have him buried with the people in the cemetery. Yes.