A soft-spoken and sedate Staten Island Muslim woman tried to slit her husband’s throat as he lay sleeping in the middle of the night.
Rabia Sarwar, 37, was enraged that her husband Sheikh Naseem, 41, asked her to eat pork and to wear non-Islamic attire, officials said.
“It’s time for you to die!” the Muslim woman screamed as she pounced on hubby and hacked at his neck with a butcher knife, sources said.
He woke early Wednesday to find her straddling his chest and hacking at his neck with a knife.
Naseem, a burly teacher at Susan Wagner High School, managed to overpower his petite wife and to remove the weapon from her grasp.
The couple had only been together for five months.
The union represented the Pakistani-born Naseem’s third attempt at connubial bliss. His first two marriages ended in divorce court. Naseem is not a practicing Muslim but sought a traditional wife. His pairing with Rabia was arranged through family friends.
“Being that he didn’t do very well the first two times, he thought he would try a woman of his own culture,” one of Naseem’s ex-wives told the Daily News on condition that she remain unidentified.
“She is very soft-spoken, very low-key,” the woman said. “I would not have dreamed anything like this would happen.”
But authorities say Rabia was furious that Naseem dressed and acted like an ordinary Western kafir:
“She’s a very devout Muslim and she felt that he got her to marry him under false pretenses,” a source said. “He doesn’t really observe any of the traditions of Islam. She says he forced her to eat pork and wear short skirts.”
Rabia also claimed that her husband’s favorite author is Salman Rushdie, who is reviled by devout Muslims for his celebrated, prophet-bashing novel, “The Satanic Verses.”
The distraught wife has been released on $25,000 bail after being arraigned yesterday on attempted murder rap charges.
Rabia claimed that she had suffered “months of emotional abuse and duress,” sources said.
The police had no record of domestic abuse complaints against Naseem.
