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

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.

“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.

“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.”

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

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.”

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.

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.

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

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

Canadian immigration authorities interviewed her in April 2023 in Canada, and again in June 2025 in Ethiopia.

At her first interview, Abdi said her first marriage to Abdulasit Aman “lasted approximately one and a half years.”

They had a child, according to the decision.

“When the officer asked why her first marriage and child had not been disclosed in the immigration forms, Ms. Abdi gave contradictory answers. Ms. Abdi initially stated that she had argued with her ex-husband about whether or not to include her child in the immigration documents. Ms. Abdi then stated that she and Mr. Kemo had agreed not to include this information in the sponsorship application.”

At the end of the 2023 interview, the visa officer told Abdi “that he was refusing the sponsorship application and that she had to leave Canada, given her misrepresentations,” said the decision, noting that Adbi had the right to try again.

Kemo submitted a second application to sponsor Abdi in August 2023. “At her second interview, in 2025, Ms. Abdi stated that she had been abducted and forced into marriage. Ms. Abdi recounted how two days after her abduction, her marriage to her first husband was celebrated and validated at a Nikah ceremony attended by the elders of both families.”

Abdi went on to say “that her first marriage was not legal because she had been forced to marry her first husband.”

The panel noted Abdi “said nothing about a forced marriage” at her first hearing.

“Ms. Abdi instead explained that her mother had wanted her to marry and that she agreed to do so. That explanation directly contradicts Ms. Abdi’s statements at her second interview and at the hearing,” said the decision.

The panel gave “more weight” to her first explanation, “in accordance with the principle that ‘a person’s first story is usually the most genuine and, therefore, the one to be most believed.’”

But the officers who interviewed her in 2023 and 2025 “both concluded that Ms. Abdi had not answered their questions truthfully.”

The officer who interviewed her last year “confronted Ms. Abdi, who had stated that she spoke little Amharic and did not understand. Ms. Abdi defended herself by stating that she did not talk much at the 2023 interview. When the officer pointed out to her that the recording of the 2023 interview shows she spoke throughout it in Amharic, Ms. Abdi gave no explanation.” The panel noted the 2023 interview lasted more than three hours.

The panel “does not find” Abdi credible, said the decision.

“Throughout the sponsorship application process, Ms. Abdi had a duty of candour and truthfulness,” it said.

“Ms. Abdi cannot discharge this duty by pointing to her illiteracy. Honesty is not the prerogative of educated people.”

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