Historians find it hopeless to solve the problem of Chechen-Ingush border through Sharia Court

The Constitutional Court (CC) of Russia has put a full stop in the dispute over the Chechen-Ingush border. An attempt to solve this conflict under the Islamic law is unpromising, given the lack of mechanisms for enforcing the decisions of the Sharia Court in the Russian legal environment, the historians interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" believe.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on December 7, the Council of Teips (family clans) of the Ingush People invited the Chechen authorities to fix the Chechen-Ingush administrative border with the help of the Sharia Court. A day earlier, on December 6, the Russian CC, contrary to the previous verdict of the Ingush CC, recognized the legality of the agreement on the Chechen-Ingush border, signed by the heads of the two republics.

"Today, in different Muslim and non-Muslim countries, the Sharia has a different legal status. In Russia, the Sharia legal norms have no force of the law," said Vladimir Bobrovnikov, Professor at the Higher School of Economics.

He believes that in the case of analysis of the Chechen-Ingush conflict under the Sharia law, even greater problems and unresolved issues can evolve.

The solution of this issue according to Sharia law will have no legal force in Russia, which is a secular state, Ali Evteev, a former Mufti of North Ossetia, agrees.

The Chechen-Ingush border issue has been exhausted after the decision of the Russian CC, therefore it is unreasonable to raise this issue through the use of other legal systems, says Movsur Ibragimov, Doctor of History, Professor of the Division of Domestic History and Political Science at the Chechen State University.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on December 20, 2018 at 04:51 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.