That's unnecessarily longwinded.
You can just use:
if ($istok($strip($1-),ik,32)) { ... }
--> returns $true if an occurance of "ik" is found, delimited by spaces
--> returns $false in all other cases
Or you could use the following to cater for both "ik" and "mij":
if ($regex($1-,/(?<= |^)(?:ik|mij)(?= |$)/Si)) { ... }
If this event will only have code related to this match, then you could move the regex code (with a slight modification) to the matchtext of the event, and use the $ event prefix.
on $*:text:/(?<= |^)(ik|mij)(?= |$)/Si:#: code