A strange and ‘unsettling’ new symbol is quietly sweeping across the United States – and some Americans fear it’s no accident.
Dozens of cities and states have adopted – or are considering – new flag designs featuring the unfamiliar eight-point star, a symbol critics claim is more common in Islam than in US history.
Although the geometric symbol has roots in various cultures and religions around the world, it has rarely appeared in American flag iconography, which has long favored the traditional five-point star, popularized in Betsy Ross’s design of Old Glory.
‘It’s like this prominent symbol of Islam is suddenly flying all over the nation,’ Jacqueline Toboroff, a conservative writer and author in Manhattan who ran unsuccessfully for New York City Council in 2021, told the Daily Mail.
‘Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.’
The foreign-looking star now appears on at least 40 new or proposed-new city and state flags across the US.
Minnesota, under Governor Tim Walz, became the first state to display the foreign symbol when it introduced its new flag in May 2024.
Walz proudly showed off the new flag in a YouTube video in which he is seen taking away the 131-year state banner.
In March 2024, Utah lawmakers tried to foist a new flag with an eight-point star on the populace but after pushback about the significance of the eight-points, they pulled the new design and made it a five-point star instead.
In 2024, Minnesota, under Democratic Governor Tim Walz, officially unveiled its new state flag, ditching its historic seal for a minimalist blue and white design featuring the controversial eight-point star
Old Flag: the previous design of the flag – that goes back to the 1960s’ – featured a depiction of a Native American on horseback at the center of the seal
Toboroff said she can’t prove there is a deliberate campaign or conspiracy afoot to fly what she calls ‘the banner of jihad’ in the US but insists that the new flags are bad news.
‘I think we’ve been infiltrated on a very deep and pervasive level. It’s statistically impossible for so many groups in all these states voting for this eight-point star so consistently.
‘I’ve seen the eight-point star at a lot of pro Palestine rallies. I don’t know if it’s a call to jihad here but I know it’s part of the conquering of the US.’
Toboroff said she and some friends who were keeping track of post-George Floyd cancel culture, began noticing how many state and city flags were being changed around the country.
‘At first I thought it was just one of the new woke things that were happening and they were getting rid of the traditional stuff,’ Toboroff told DailyMail.com.
‘Then I started to see how so many of the new flags were similar in color and design and they all had the eight-point star.’
Kerry Byrne, founder and publisher of Thug Adams, a Substack chronicling American history and cancel culture, stumbled across the proliferation of new and proposed US state and city flags while researching the controversy over the Washington NFL team name change in 2020.
‘They were renaming everything at the time, schools, commercial products, everything,’ Byrne said.
Although the geometric symbol has roots in various cultures and religions around the world, it is more common in Islamic art and Muslim countries, and is rarely used in American flags
On social media, the National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has led the campus and street protests around the country in recent years has the symbol on its social media and marketing materials
‘Then I discovered that they were re-doing traditional flags as well and so many of them included the eight-point star which had never been used on flags in this country.
‘They’re just getting ready to choose a new design for the Massachusetts flag which has been around for 250 years and some of the design proposals I’ve seen have the eight-point star.
‘This is a symbol you see all over the Islamic world. This is a time when radical Islam wants a global caliphate. No way is this a coincidence. They are counting on us not paying attention.’
The National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has led campus and street protests around the country over the last few years has the symbol on its social media and marketing materials.
Along with Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, and Washington state are all in various stages of replacing official state flags.
Donna Bergstrom, a part Native American who’s the deputy chair of the Republican Party in Minnesota and a former intelligence officer in the US Marines, is among many in the state upset about the new flag unveiled in the state last year.
It features a dark blue field approximating the shape of the state on the left with an eight-point star, which is said to represent the North Star. On the right it is light blue to signify the water in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
Detractors say it also resembles the flag of Somalia which features a white, five-point star on a light blue background.
Minnesota’s State Emblems Redesign Committee selected its new flag after considering various options – all with a white eight-pointed North star
The modern Minnesota state is seen flying at the capital building in May 2025
‘It was a very quick, very hurried process to change the flag design,’ Bergstrom said.
‘I later found out that’s not atypical of what’s been going on with other abrupt flag re-designs around the country.
‘It also struck me as very odd that so many of these new flags have eight-point stars.
‘These are indicators, as we’d call them in the military, of a possible national security threat that Americans should pay attention to.
‘Call it a coincidence if you will but it’s a coordinated coincidence.’
Nonsense, say two prominent experts in the field of vexillology – the scientific study of flags.
Flag guru Ted Kaye, who wrote the 2006 book, ‘Good Flag Bad Flag’ and consulted on many of the new flag designs popping up all over the US including the one in Minnesota, sounded good-natured but exasperated when told about Byrne’s belief that the new flags with eight-point stars are the ‘the banner of jihad being raised right before your very eyes’.
‘First of all there are only so many points you can put on a star,’ Kaye told the Daily Mail.
Several cities and states have adopted the eight-point geometric symbol on their flags in recent years including, Hutchinson, Kansas, which debuted its first official city flag in 2019
‘There are only four, five, six, seven and eight-points of stars. In the past an eight-point star has also resembled a sun.
‘There were multiple reasons the eight-point star was chosen for the new Minnesota flag – all having to do with Minnesota itself. None of them had anything to do with Islam.’
Kaye also pointed out that an eight-point star appears on the rotunda of the Minnesota state capital building, under the dome.
Kaye says he thinks the movement to change traditional flags came about not because of some Islamist conspiracy but as a result of his book – and a 2015 TedTalk by flag aficionado Roman Mars that’s garnered more than five million views.
‘I think the wave of flag change came about partly because of our work and also because there was a growing concern about depictions of the Confederacy or Native Americans that were deemed offensive,’ he said.
‘In the case of Minnesota, their (traditional) flag showed a settler plowing land while a Native American rode off on his horse into the distance. It was called a genocidal mess and that drove the impetus to change it.’
UK-based Alan Hardy, a flag expert and member of the North American Vexillological Association, said there was zero truth to claims that the new flags in the US have a sinister tie to radical Islam.
‘These are all straw man arguments,’ Hardy told the Daily Mail. ‘There are all kinds of pointed star images all over the world with any number of meanings. These flags are only being improved on.
In 2024, Utah, nicknamed the Beehive State, unveiled a new state flag with an emblem of a honeycomb-shaped hexagon with a single white star in the middle. Its previous flag, which dates back to 1911, is now known as the ‘historic flag’
The original proposed design of the new flag, however, had an eight-point star in the center that was later replaced by its current five-point star after pushback
‘We’re not trying to erase history, we’re just trying to accentuate the better bits. The American flag, for example, changed 29 times in history.
‘Stripes were added and taken away. In 1795 the American flag had 13 six-point stars before it was changed to five-point stars.’
But Eunice Davidson, a Dakota Sioux who co-founded the Native American Guardians Association in 2017 to fight the eradication of Native American symbols and names around the country, believes history is being erased.
She said she first learned about the changes being made to the Minnesota flag when Bergstrom called her to report that the state lawmakers had decided to take the Native American off the traditional flag in favor of a new design with an eight-point star that resembled in part the flag of Somalia.
‘We’re going to forget about who we are if we start changing all these symbols,’ Davidson told DailyMail.com.
‘They’re there for a reason. We had no problem with the Redskins team name and we have no problem with Native American images on flags. Those are our ancestors.
‘We’re proud of them. All of this flag-changing seems very suspicious to me and it made me think – who is pushing this?’
Lisa Bohne Davis of Cedar City, Utah, a self-described involved ‘patriot,’ said she grew very nervous watching the controversy over the new Utah flag unfold.
The eight-point star is commonly seen in Islamic art, such as this iron fence in Alcazar, Spain
‘An eight-point star is not a symbol we’ve seen before on American flags,’ Bohne Davis said.
‘When I first began noticing this I was like, dude there’s something up and I don’t have a good feeling about it.
‘Look at the UK falling to Islamist terror groups and we’re hoisting up new flags with these symbols now? It just seems very ominous.
‘If this were a star of David or a cross going up on all the new flags people would be losing their minds.’
Davis claimed the she spoke to several lawmakers who told her they’d been ‘bullied’ into voting for the new, eight-point star adorned flag before the decision was reversed.
‘I don’t know what is going on but I see that something is happening and it doesn’t seem to be organic.
‘When there’s a process that seems to be forced through by a handful of politicians, it’s literally a red flag for me.’
