GENEVA, Switzerland: Muslims and Jews in Geneva who want their own space for graves apart from public burial grounds have challenged a cemetery law that has kept the peace between Protestants and Catholics for 130 years.

In recent decades, Geneva, shaped as a "Protestant Rome" by religious reformer Jean Calvin in the 16th century, has sought to foster religious harmony.

The Swiss city has practiced a strict secularism that extends to the grave requiring that all cemeteries be public and nondenominational, with equal plots aligned the same way.

But the city's Jewish and Muslim communities want separate cemeteries that would allow them to bury their dead according their religions' rites.

A spokesman of the Foundation for Islamic Culture in Geneva said, "We (Jews and Muslims) both need a place where we can bury our dead according to our rituals."