diff --git a/src/core.js b/src/core.js
index de82d77..a99efd2 100644
--- a/src/core.js
+++ b/src/core.js
@@ -957,7 +957,7 @@ jQuery.extend({
 			// Convert html string into DOM nodes
 			if ( typeof elem == "string" ) {
 				// Fix "XHTML"-style tags in all browsers
-				elem = elem.replace(/(<(\w+)[^>]*?)\/>/g, function(all, front, tag){
+				elem = elem.replace(new RegExp("/(<(\w+)[^>]*?)\/>", "g"), function(all, front, tag){
 					return tag.match(/^(abbr|br|col|img|input|link|meta|param|hr|area|embed)$/i) ?
 						all :
 						front + "></" + tag + ">";