Sharia law 'religious divorce' fails to fly with Immigration and Refugee Board - National Post

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

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.