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Al Qaeda has an opening for a new editor.
Killed along with terror mouthpiece Anwar al-Awlaki was Samir Khan, a former Queens kid turned militant Islamist who published “Inspire,” al Qaeda’s online magazine and recruitment tool.
Khan, 25, was a Saudi-born US citizen, whose family moved to Maspeth, Queens, in 1993, and later to Long Island. He lived the life of a normal New York teen until a month before 9/11, when he traded his street slang and baggy pants for Islamic extremism.
He attended a summer camp at a Queens mosque, and over time became a fundamentalist. Khan and his parents moved to North Carolina in 2004, when he began taking his Islamist crusade to the Internet.
“America needs to listen to Shaykh Usaamah very carefully and take his message with great seriousness,” he wrote in one online post. “America is known to be a people of arrogance.”
He started blogging about the need to attack non-believers. Watchdog groups repeatedly tried to block his site, and on several occasions Internet service providers agreed to shut it down.
His print/Web magazine spouted al Qaeda’s ideology of attacks on Westerners, and even gave how-to manuals on how to carry one out, such as an article titled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”
Khan moved to North Carolina after spending time in New York, and from there left for Yemen two years ago, according to published reports.
It was his Web magazine which garnered the most attention, even though initially he didn’t get the credit.
The table of contents included a piece titled “The way to save the Earth” supposedly taken from a speech by Osama himself.
Another page with an “Editor’s Letter” explains the magazine’s purpose.
“In the West, in the East . . . and elsewhere, there are millions of Muslims whose first or second language is English,” it said. “It is our intent to be a platform to present the important issues facing [al Qaeda] today to the wide and dispersed English speaking Muslim readership.”
An article called “A message to the people of Yemen” was purportedly by al Qaeda’s No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
In one issue, the magazine promises an article on “The Cartoon Crusade,” and another story looks at “The schools of jihad.”
Al-Awlaki, who died along with Khan, penned another story.
“May our souls be sacrificed for you!” Awlaki wrote.