A photo of a New Jersey home flying a flag that resembled the flag of ISIS, the militant group being bombed by U.S. planes in Iraq, sparked alarm and a complaint to the Department of Homeland Security – but the home’s occupant said he meant no offense and was just expressing his religion.

Mark Dunaway told ABC News that he’s flown that black flag for the 10 years he’s lived in Garwood, New Jersey. “I’m Muslim, and I fly a flag in front of my home that says I’m a Muslim,” he said.

Dunaway has flown the black flag – which bears the Arabic inscription familiar to Muslims, “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God” – every year during Ramadan, and every single Friday, he said. Having already had the flag up during Ramadan, he originally planned to keep it up until Friday.

However, after the Garwood Police Department received a complaint about the flag, officers visited Dunaway’s home on Tuesday. “The Garwood Police follow up with any complaint received,” Police Chief Bruce Underhill said in a statement to ABC News.

“Police came by that day on a matter of safety,” Dunaway said, “I had no idea until they pointed it out to me. My reaction was, ‘Are you serious?’”

“Mr. Dunaway was very receptive when we approached him with our concerns and he voluntarily took the flag down,” said Chief Underhill.

Dunaway, surprised at the complaint, realized the extent of the controversy when he saw the photo of his home posted on Twitter. “It totally caught me off guard that someone was offended to that extent,” Dunaway said.

Marc Leibowitz, who posted the photo to Twitter, told ABC News that he was sent the photo by a friend and alerted Homeland Security. Leibowitz said he doubted a member of ISIS would openly fly the flag, but that the situation was “disturbing and worth looking into,” and that he “thought Homeland Security and any relevant authorities should probably be notified.”

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Mordechai Kedar with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer at Stop Islamization of Nations conference in New York in 2012

An Israeli scholar who has come under fire for discussing rape as a hypothetical deterrent to Hamas terrorism says the controversy over his remarks has done little to dampen interest in his planned speaking tour next year at college campuses and other sites in the United States.

Mordechai Kedar, a senior lecturer in Arabic literature at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, said in an interview on Israeli radio last month that terrorists can be deterred only by the threat of their mothers and sisters being raped. Both he and the university said he was not advocating rape, just describing reality, but his comments have been widely denounced as having the potential to incite war crimes.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Kedar said his comments had been oversimplified and taken out of context. The denunciations, he said, have only raised his profile and increased interest in having him speak during his planned 45-day tour of North America in January and February. No organization has canceled any of his planned appearances, he said. In fact, he added, “at least two or three places invited me only because of this witch hunt.”

Although many colleges and campus organizations have not yet booked speakers for the coming academic year, Mr. Kedar said so far he has been asked to appear at academic events in Ann Arbor, Mich., and in Sarasota, Fla., and to give a talk sponsored by Ohio State University.

Mr. Kedar did not provide details about his Ann Arbor or Sarasota engagements. Matt Goldish, a professor of history and director of the Melton Center for Jewish Studies at Ohio State University, said his center is sponsoring a talk by Mr. Kedar at a local community center. The center initially had booked Mr. Kedar to speak last January on the subject of Arab media but canceled the event because of poor weather.

Asked about Mr. Kedar’s recent remarks about rape, Mr. Goldish said his center is “a little bit concerned” about the comments but “not concerned enough that we would cancel him.”

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