Die, infidel!
A devout Muslim woman, furious at her new husband for trying to make her drink booze, eat pork and wear revealing clothes, allegedly tried to slaughter him in his sleep.
Staten Island prosecutors said Rabia Sarwar, 37, slashed the neck of hubby Sheikh Naseem at 3 a.m. Wednesday while screaming, “It’s time for you to die!”
“She was sitting on top of my chest, and she was cutting my neck. She was ranting, ‘I have tried to take my life three or four times before. I have no regard for my life. It’s time for you to die,’ ” he said.
Naseem, a 41-year-old high-school math teacher who goes by the nickname “Eddie,” managed to wrest the knife away from his wife — whom he wed five months ago in an arranged marriage. He pleaded for her to consider his two kids from a previous marriage.
“She just screamed, ‘They are going to be orphans now!’ ” he said. “She kept on coming after me with the knife, and I grabbed it and broke it into two pieces and ran out of the room.”
He then realized that Sarwar had hidden all the phones, so he pounded on a neighbor’s door for help.
Police were called to the scene in New Brighton and arrested Sarwar.
Naseem suffered only surface wounds to his neck, face and hands.
Naseem — who was born in Pakistan but is half-Norwegian and practices the Unitarian faith — said he moved to the United States more than 20 years ago and quickly adapted to American culture, drinking casually and developing a taste for barbecued ribs.
He twice married non-Pakistani women.
When those marriages failed, he wed Sarwar — who also hails from Pakistan — five months ago through nuptials arranged by relatives in New Jersey.
Although Sarwar has lived in the United States for more than a decade, Naseem said, “she had never been exposed to American culture.”
At first, everything seemed fine, he said.
“She was getting adjusted. She was trying to live the way I live, but on the same token, she tells her parents, ‘I went out drinking with him,’ and her mother started making derogatory statements about me,” he said. “There was no gun pointed to her head to do these things.
“She even had a favorite drink — black Russians.”
Sarwar’s lawyer, Joe Licitra, admitted his client had been hospitalized in the past for depression, but insisted she had been “emotionally abused.”
“He got her to drink alcohol, eat pork and change her clothes. She wanted to dress traditionally. I think he was a cruel person who preyed on her,” he said.
In her statement to police, Sarwar said she was under the impression Naseem was a Muslim. She was stunned to find he wasn’t, and that his favorite book was Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” — the book that led the Ayatollah Khomeini to put out a contract for the author’s murder.
She allegedly told cops about her knife attack: “I tried my best to cut his throat.”
Sarwar — who appeared in court wearing a velour tracksuit and flip-flops but later put on a headscarf — was charged with attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon, according to DA Daniel Donovan. She was released on $25,000 bail.
Naseem said he would immediately file for divorce but did not think she should be in jail.
“I think she’s a lunatic and she should be in a mental hospital,” he said. “I want the best for her in her life. I hope she gets herself corrected.”
Additional reporting by Austin Fenner