Sharia law ‘religious divorce’ fails to fly with Immigration and Refugee Board

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada sign in Ottawa on Friday, Aug. 7, 2026. Photo by HYUNGCHEOL PARK /Postmedia

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A Canadian Muslim who tried to sponsor his Ethiopian wife for a permanent resident visa is out of luck because her “religious divorce” from her first husband under Sharia law isn’t recognized here.

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Fetno Umer Kemo appealed a visa officer’s decision to deny Rahama Adem Abdi the document that allows foreign nationals to live, work and study anywhere in Canada indefinitely to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. But the panel concluded that Kemo failed to establish that Abdi was “free to marry” when they wed in 2021.

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“Mr. Kemo has not shown that Ms. Abdi’s religious divorce in 2017 was valid under Canadian law,” the panel said in a decision published in June in French and this month in an English translation.

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“As a result, the officer’s decision not to issue his wife a visa is valid in law. The couple’s marriage is not valid, and Ms. Abdi is therefore not a member of the family class. The panel does not have jurisdiction to consider humanitarian and compassionate considerations in this case. The appeal is dismissed.”

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The visa officer further determined that the couple’s relationship was not genuine and that their marriage was entered into primarily for immigration purposes.

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The panel said it didn’t have to consider “the issues of the genuineness of the couple’s relationship or their intent at the time of their marriage” because their marriage isn’t “valid under Canadian law.”

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Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations “state that a foreign national shall not be considered the sponsor’s spouse if the foreign national was, at the time of their marriage, the spouse of another person,” said the decision.

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During her immigration interview last year, Abdi said her divorce was carried out verbally by religious authorities in Ethiopia. Her ex-husband took part remotely by telephone, she said.

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In the same interview, Abdi didn’t “submit any official document attesting to her divorce,” said the decision.

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That led the visa officer to conclude that, “at the time of her marriage to Mr. Kemo, Ms. Abdi was still legally married to her first husband, contrary to the requirements of the regulations.”

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Kemo argued that Abdi’s first marriage and divorce “took place in Ethiopia in a rural context where issuing and registering official documents is the exception, not the rule,” said the decision.

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Kemo gave the panel a document attesting to Abdi’s divorce. “It is a judgment issued by Ethiopian judicial authorities recognizing Ms. Abdi’s divorce. The judgment was rendered on January 1, 2026.”

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The panel sided with the visa officer, finding that Abdi’s first marriage was not legally dissolved in 2021, and she was therefore still married to her first husband when she married Kemo.

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Abdi is approximately 38, but she doesn’t know her exact age. “At the hearing, she described herself as someone who could not read or write.”