A news issue of Al-Shabaab’s magazine calls on jihadists to emulate the British converts who murdered a soldier on a Woolwich street in 2013, along with a poem warning that jihadists would be “marching” to Maine.

The issue of Gaidi Mtaani also features a lengthy story about late al-Qaeda recruiter and cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, whose lectures are cited by American terrorists to this day, playing paintball in San Diego in the 1990s.

The Somali terror group, allied with al-Qaeda, has previously urged Western jihadists to draw inspiration from the attack on 25-year-old Fusilier Lee Rigby, who was first struck by a car and then stabbed and hacked by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. London-born Adebolajo, 28, who was raised Christian before converting to Islam, filmed a statement before police arrived at the murder scene, vowing “you people will never be safe.” Both are serving life in prison.

Al-Shabaab’s magazine dubs Adebolajo 2013’s “Muslim of the Year,” declaring “good men are hard to find.”

“In an age stained with defeatism and cowardice, a room full of Mujahid Adebolajo is exactly what today’s world needs,” the article, bylined Abu Maryam, states. “…If a pictures speaks a thousand words, then blood in British streets speak a million words. Knowing that the British Government only understands the language of violence, instead of writing his letter on paper, Adebolajo decided to write his letter on the streets of Southeast London using the blood of a British soldier.”

Adebolajo was “practically teaching the British public and the world in general, the elementary principle of universalism” through the murder, the terror group argued, with eye-for-an-eye reasoning.

“World media and left wing conservatives can deceptively portray Mujahid as a psychopathic slayer if they please, but after watching the video and hearing his words, deep down inside everyone knew he was making perfect sense. Amidst the hustle and bustle of London streets, specifically targeting a British soldier once stationed in Afghanistan clearly expresses the political motives behind the killings and disproves the fallacy that the attack was a haphazard intent to randomly slay Britons,” the article continues.

“It’s quite ignorant and presumptuous of non-Muslims and Muslims alike to think that the driving force of Mujahid’s actions were fueled by an inherent disdain for British culture or values,” the terror group argues, noting that if Adebolajo just wanted to kill fellow Britons there were more people at the scene he could have attacked.

“Their message couldn’t be any simpler, ‘We swear by Allaah the All-Mighty we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone.’ These same axioms expressed by Mujahid in England, were reiterated by Nidal Hasan, Mohamed Mirah, and the same concepts that will continue to be personified through bloodshed in Western streets, unless taken seriously.” Hasan killed 13 at Fort Hood in 2009, while Mohammed Merah killed French soldiers and Jewish children during a 2012 shooting spree in Toulouse and Montauban.

Merah was born in Toulouse while Hasan was born in Virginia, keeping with the article’s theme of urging attacks at home by jihadists native to Western countries.

A poem bylined by the same author of the article says to “tell the West we’re a roaring flame/That can’t be doused that can’t be tamed/And until you cease your bombs and planes/We’ll keep marching till we reach the State of Maine.”

A lengthy article in the magazine describes the experiences of a Western jihadist — one “of the generation of young Muslims who grew up in the west during the 90s who were at a high risk of losing their Muslim identity” — getting to know al-Awlaki and later reconnecting with him in Yemen.

The author says he was living in San Diego while al-Awlaki attended San Diego State University and became imam of the Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami mosque near campus. He described going to the nickel arcade and paintball ranges east of San Diego with the cleric as al-Awlaki “was particularly fond of paintball activities.”

At this time, New Mexico-born al-Awlaki had already gone through training in Afghanistan and returned home.

“At the beginning of the first match, I remember seeing the Sheikh move forward and then he crouched down and started crawling on the ground slowly moving forward. After some time I was shot and moved to the sidelines to watch how the match would finish. I looked over to where I had last seen the Sheikh and couldn’t see any sign of him. I kept surveying the surrounding areas looking for any sign of movement when all of a sudden there was a firefight a good fifty feet in front of the area where I had been scanning and I was surprised to see the sheikh as he was taking cover,” the author described of a paintball outing.

“I remember thinking, ‘How was it possible for him to move all that distance with- out being detected?’ It was amazing as he is a tall brother. The brothers commented and all agreed that the Sheikh was very skilled in close quarter military tactics. I would not find out until many years later that the Sheikh had been to Afghanistan in the early 90s.”