This is now one of the most complex issues that the city of Rabat and its counterpart Salé will have to tackle. The cemeteries of the Kingdom's capital are increasingly struggling to accommodate the dead. Day by day, the space allocated to cemeteries within the city is shrinking and the commune is already sounding the alarm. According to the deputy mayor of Rabat, Abdelmouniim Madani, within two years, the city's inhabitants will not find anywhere to bury their dead. Therefore, in the name of a triple concern for hygiene, urban rationality and the unsuitability of cemeteries for the dense urban fabric, local actors are currently looking into the design of a new approach to manage this service, because it will first be necessary to respect a difficult urban order. "Before thinking about creating a cemetery, we must first designate the right place required so as not to have to change the orientation and vocation of the space," stresses Mr Madani. Indeed, it is clear that the existence of a cemetery in a given place will slow down the development of that region and hinder the creation of commercial or tourist activities. The most concrete example is that of the land located near the tomb of Sidi Benacher in Salé, which has long been coveted by private companies. As soon as the latter expressed their desire to create a green space and leisure area where any reference to death would be hidden, many oppositions to this project emerged. The inhabitants showed a lot of scepticism, for fear that the place would lose its identity if the area were opened to multiple uses. The city is therefore faced with a real challenge, because it will have to opt for one of the two scenarios that are currently possible. The city council will have to choose: create a large cemetery in a peri-urban area, namely in another commune, located far from Rabat, such as Aïn Aouda. But this idea of relocation will not be without consequences, as it could meet with strong resistance, both from the inhabitants, whose practices would be strongly modified, and from certain city councillors, who wish to create or preserve local cemeteries or even create one; and this brings us back to the second choice. The deputy mayor of Rabat proposes, in this context, to choose the green belt, located at the edge of each city, as a place to accommodate this burial site. "If we opt for this scenario, the urbanisation of the city will be protected and the new cemetery will be well placed in a welcoming and green space, like what is done in other countries," indicates Mr Madani. While waiting for this question to be settled, the cemetery therefore finds itself at the heart of a conflict between the logic of public action, which wishes to distance it from its traditional roots, religious foundations, which hinder these attempts but sometimes adapt to them, and the practices of the inhabitants, for whom the cemetery remains a place of proximity and sociability invested in a collective and symbolic manner.

The cemeteries in Rabat and its counterpart Salé are unfortunately marked by a high density of graves and are now joined and enclosed by urban expansion. Pending longer-term projects, the administration is primarily focusing on the fight against the informal aspect of cemeteries by establishing new rules for organisation and space management. Indeed, the city council stresses the need to install fences, walls and gates, and to control burials and passages inside the cemetery. One of the councillors on the Rabat city council recalls that it is necessary to "fight against anarchy with fences and the guard's control. He must be forced to bury with a permit, alignments are needed, because, in the city, one does not bury as in the countryside, where the administrative, regulatory or land constraints are less strong," indicates a councillor.