The black flag of the Jihadist extremist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) was seen flying this week in front of a home in none other than Garwood, New Jersey.
An uproar broke out after a picture of the flag was posted to Twitter on Tuesday by Marc Leibowitz, a former IDF paratrooper living in New Jersey. Despite doubting whether an actual IS member would openly fly the flag, Leibowitz alerted Homeland Security.
Mark Dunaway, the owner of the flag, claimed to ABC News on Thursday that the flag was not connected to IS, saying he's flown it for the past ten years. However, when Garwood police came to investigate complaints on Tuesday, Dunaway "voluntarily took the flag down," said police.
According to Dunaway the flag, which reads "There is no G-d but Allah, and Mohammed is the messenger of Allah," is an innocent expression of religion. "I'm Muslim, and I fly a flag in front of my home that says I'm a Muslim," he said.
Likewise Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), claimed to the news outlet "this is not the ISIS flag," stating the ISIS flag has an additional phrase at the bottom referencing the "Islamic State."
Despite the protestations, a careful investigation of photographic evidence of IS Jihadists in Iraq and Syria waving their flag shows it is absolutely identical to the one flown by Dunaway, and does not contain an additional phrase at the bottom.
It is worth noting that former FBI Counterterrorism expert John Guandolo in March revealed to Arutz Sheva that CAIR is a "Hamas front." Last month, during the ongoing Operation Protective Edge, a CAIR representative interviewed on Fox News TV refused to call Hamas a terrorist group.
Dunaway, who is "American-born and -raised," has replaced the IS flag with a San Diego Chargers flag, saying "I just want this situation to go away."
New Jersey isn't the only place where IS flags have been cropping up; reports reveal that recently the flags have been spotted in Israeli-Arab cities, including Nazareth and Akko.