Why do we have mazars?

+1 agreed

Tawassul - I need to check what this means. Thank you for your reply! For sure, things have taken certain directions ,which not necessarily reflect the teachings of Islam and I feel, it is our duty to grasp these differences and address them, rather than simply ignore them.

Tawassul means Though somebody or with some source.

@zeeshan I agree on the second part of ur answer but actually in Islam, graves shudnt be prominent, so building mazar wud be wrong then, Tawassul cud only be on duas, like normally we use Muhammad SAW tawwasul in our dua daily after salat.

Quite true. But then Prophet Muhammad S.A.W.W instructed people to visit Graves to remember about death, and afterlife. Also, it is said that when one visits graves, the dead person listens and becomes aware of the presence of a person by his/her grave.
Another Tawassul example is found in Mairaaj. Prophet Musa A.S time and time again asked Prophet S.A.W.W to ask for decrease in the number of prayers in a day. Musa A.S was not alive at that moment, and yet he helped Prophet S.A.W.W in that state. Hence, becoming a 'Waseela'.
And I agree, exaggeration is not required at all.

(I didnt want to answer this one coz its a hardcore religious matter but I have my opinion based on logic and common sense here, which 'can' be completely wrong)
Here's the thing, if you are talking about asking others to pray for you, you should ask your parents or anyone else too, but dont say some one you 'think' is pious PERIOD.
Who guaranteed you that people like Data Ganj Bakhsh or any other Sufi, Saint or Auliya as we know them were pious?? Did Allah made a revelation is Quran, or was there any Hadith, 'mentioning names' that these are going to be the pious people? No! Its just us or our forefathers judging who is pious or who is not which is so wrong per se.
How could you ask someone lying dead in a grave to convey to Allah for you when you dont even know if or not he is closer to the Almighty or not?
Can anyone give me any authentic source that mentions any names telling which of the Sufi Saints after Prophet (PBUH)'s times were guaranteed as Jannati or 'Bakhshay huay' by Allah?
So the best thing is that you pray yourself or ask just anyone you find to pray for you instead of going to the graves and asking dead people.
So I'd say :-
1) The sole purpose of Mazar's for me could probably be remembering someone that 'People' wanted to remember, which is not such a good reason itself, or may be the architectural stuff.
2) I dont know about it having to do anything about Islam or not coz I may not have all the requisite knowledge for that.
3) They promote Superstitions and illiterate people tend to rely on irrational ways to cope with their problems. To me, the only rational way to do that is ask Allah and work hard if you need something, and then leave it to your fate.

nicely sad, Awais. Agree.

thx Zainab and yes, that is the other thing I thought of: Why do we need to make a grave so prominent, when we are not supposed to do so... islamically - at least, that is what I thought.

exactly, why are the graves so prominent? why do we build complete buildings over graves??
I've been to Masjid-e-Nabawi, they dont even let you offer fateha facing the grave of the Prophet(PBUH), they ask you to turn around face the Ka'aba and offer dua in that direction and just do ziarat of the grave.
Which makes perfect sense. Dua is only to be asked from the Almighty. Nobody else can fulfill our prayers.

We do not ask anything from Mazars, these are graves of Saints where we go and pray to Allah and ask him to forgive our sins and listen us as these are blessed places of the friends of Allah and his blessings are more active in these places. The main concept is that we are sinful and these saints are the beloved and blessed friends of Allah as he stated in Qura'an Pak so Allah will forgive our sins and fulfill our prays because of these saints, and yeah it does not necessary to go to mazars you can pray anywhere from the Waseela of these Saints.

Allah lives in our hearts.. He said ask me wherever and whenever you want. You don't have to go to any particular place to ask for his blessing except for Makkah ofcourse.

can you be sure that the saint is actually a saint and not being punished for his sins!!! you can never know. there is no surety.. even if junaid your reasoning is deemed correct, it fails the test of determining certainity of the persons piety.

Err, Urdu/Arabic script isn't being rendered properly, will work on that.

Thanks to me ;)