The burial of Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a Muslim cemetery in Virginia appears to be legal, according to the county sheriff who investigated the secretive undertaking.

Tsarnaev, 26, was buried at the Al-Barzakh Cemetery in Doswell, Va., last week after relatives and a funeral director in Worcester, Mass., unsuccessfully sought a burial place for more than a week.

Tsarnaev’s remains were washed and ready to be buried, but cemeteries in several cities refused to take the body, fearing protests and desecration. And as a Muslim, the 26-year-old’s body could not be cremated. Attempts to send the body back to his native Russia also failed.

Disgusted by all the furor, a Christian woman, Marsha Mullen of Richmond, Va., stepped in as a gesture of kindness. She emailed religious leaders and others to find a final resting place for Tsarnaev.

Al-Barzakh offered a plot.

Tsarnaev’s uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, took possession of the body and moved it to Virginia. On Thursday of last week, it was revealed the suspect in the bombings that killed three and wounded more than 200 others had been buried.

“I buried him with my own hands,” Tsarni told NBCWashington.com on Friday. “It’s over.”

Hours after the burial, Caroline County officials asked the state to investigate whether it was done properly or if laws had been broken. Neighbors protested a police presence at the cemetery.

Late Saturday, Caroline County Sheriff Tony Lippa issued a statement, saying his office had reviewed the death certificate, burial permit, transportation permit for movement of the body from Massachusetts to Virginia as well as other documents. He consulted with David Storke, mayor of the county seat of Bowling Green, who also happens to be a funeral home owner.

“It would appear that all paperwork is in order at this point. I am still awaiting return phone calls from the Islamic Society of Greater Richmond, Islamic Funeral Services and Worcester Police Chief Gary J. Gemme,” Lippa’s statement said.

Lippa said some security was provided at the gravesite on Friday. There were no reported incidents. He vowed not to divert limited government resources to protect the gravesite, “especially one belonging to that terrorist.”

“Unfortunately we now find ourselves forever connected to this tragedy in the most unsavory way,” he said in his statement, “as the final resting place of one of the alleged terrorists."

His brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is in a prison hospital in Massachusetts awaiting trial on federal terrorism charges.

This story was originally published on Sun May 12, 2013 10:22 PM EDT

Luis Alvarez / AP

Tamerlan Tsarnaev's uncle Ruslan Tsarni said Tsarnaev was buried in this burial plot in Doswell, near Richmond Va.

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was buried in a Muslim cemetery in Virginia after a Christian woman spearheaded an interfaith effort to find a resting place for his remains, she said in a statement.

The donation of a plot by Al-Barzakh Cemetery in Doswell, Va., quickly sparked new controversy, with Virginia officials complaining they were not notified and questioning whether any laws were broken that might allow them to "undo" the burial.

"I wouldn't have done it this way," said Peter Stefan, the Worcester, Mass., funeral director who had spent a week trying to find someone to take the body off his hands.

"Not telling the town has created a total nightmare."

Stefan accepted Tsarnaev's remains from the medical examiner and prepared them for burial, but cemeteries in several cities refused to take the body for fear of protests, desecration and notoriety.

As a Muslim, the 26-year-old could not be cremated. Efforts to send his body back to Russia, where his parents live, also failed.

Monitoring the impasse from a distance, Richmond, Va., resident Martha Mullen said she decided to send out emails to local religious leaders and received an offer from Al-Barzakh to donate a plot.

"Jesus tells us 'love your enemies,'" she said in a statement. "Not to hate them even after they are dead."

In an interview with NBC station WWBT-TV, Mullen said she was appalled by the furor over burying Tsarnaev, who was killed in a firefight with police after being identified as a suspect in the April 15 bombing that killed three and wounded 200.

Cambridge Police Dept. file

Tamerlan Tsarnaev's body was buried in Virginia, his uncle says.

"Fundamentally, it struck me as wrong," she said. "We've buried other bad people, so the difference only that seemed to me that difference was the fact he was Muslim."

Mullen, a seminary graduate and licensed counselor who attends a United Methodist church, said her pastor blessed her efforts to find a plot for the accused bomber.

On Thursday, officials in Worcester made the surprise announcement that Tsarnaev's body had been moved and entombed. Stefan said he turned over the body to Tsarnaev's uncle "who made all the arrangements."

"I buried him with my own hands," the uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, told NBCWashington.com. "It's over."

Maybe not.

Hours after Mullen revealed where the grave is, officials in Caroline County asked the state to investigate whether the burial was done by the books, although they conceded there's no indication any rules were broken.

"If there were, I think we'd try to undo what's been done," Floyd Thomas, chairman of the county board of supervisors, said at a press conference.

As police posted an officer to watch for vandals or protests, some neighbors expressed outrage. The imam of the Islamic Center of Virginia told The Associated Press that his community was upset and that Mullen had only consulted a local Muslim group.

Bukhari Abdel-Alim of Islamic Funeral Services, which manages the 47-plot cemetery, defended the move, saying that while he and his colleagues "strongly disagree" with Tsarnaev's actions, "that does not release us from our obligation to return his body to the earth."

"He can't bury himself," Abdel-Alim said.

NBC News' Alexandra Moe contributed to this report

This story was originally published on Fri May 10, 2013 12:28 PM EDT

Ste Intelligence Group via Reute

Colleen LaRose, known by the self-created pseudonym of "Jihad Jane", is pictured in this photo released by Site Intelligence Group on March 10, 2010.

Colleen LaRose answered the door of her duplex near Philadelphia to find an FBI agent standing on the porch. 

He had questions about her interest in Islamic websites.

For LaRose, whose online name was Jihad Jane, it was the second time the FBI had questioned her that summer. Weeks earlier, she'd spoken with an agent by phone and offered a series of lame lies: She had denied any interest in jihadist forums, denied wiring money overseas, denied that she went by Jihad Jane.

This time, on Aug. 21, 2009, LaRose lied less.

Yes, she visited Muslims websites, she said. As a recent convert to Islam, she wanted to learn as much as possible. Yeah, she said, maybe her political views had angered others online. But she denied raising money for al-Qaida or having any connection with extremists.

Lying to the FBI is a crime, the agent told her.

OK, she said.

Then he asked if she planned to travel to Holland.

She was thinking about it, she told the agent, but there had been a death in the family -- a heart attack had just taken her boyfriend's father. His funeral was the next day.

When the agent asked for a way to keep in touch, LaRose gave him her cell number. Call anytime next week, she told him.

A day later, LaRose attended the funeral. The day after the service, Aug. 23, she pulled the hard drive from her computer and stashed it in a box. She gathered $2,000 in cash and packed three suitcases. With a bargain plane ticket to Amsterdam in hand, LaRose persuaded an acquaintance to drive her to the airport.

She was moving ahead with the plan conceived by the al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan, the man she knew only as Eagle Eye. Already, she had pledged to kill the Swedish artist Lars Vilks. He had blasphemed Islam by drawing the Prophet Mohammad's head on a dog.

/

Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks poses before an interview with Reuters in Stockholm on March 10, 2010.

As she headed to Europe with plans to murder in the name of Allah, LaRose left her boyfriend and mother with the impression she was running a quick errand.

Mary Richards
Landing in Amsterdam, Colleen LaRose felt euphoric. She had shed her old life -- 46 years scarred by rapes, prostitution, drugs and failed marriages -- for this new one full of promise.

At the airport, LaRose donned a full burka for the first time. More firsts awaited: She would meet her first jihadist, enter her first mosque and learn how to pray.

She gave the taxi driver the name of the mosque, and as the cab pulled away from the airport, a song from childhood popped into her head.

“Who can turn the world on with her smile? Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?”

It was the theme from the 1970s TV series, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." LaRose imagined herself as the lead character, Mary Richards. If she had been wearing a hat instead of a burka, LaRose thought, she would have stepped from the cab with a huge smile and acted out the show's classic opening, twirling around and tossing her hat in the air.

“Well, it's you girl and you should know it!

“With every glance and every little movement, you show it …

“You're gonna make it after all. ...”

When the taxi driver found the mosque, no one was waiting for LaRose. For nearly an hour, she stood outside in a full hijab with her luggage. Then it began to rain.

Finally, another Muslim woman arrived and took LaRose to see her contact, a man named Abdullah. LaRose had expected him to introduce her to fellow jihadists, to train her for her mission, to teach her the ways of Islam.

None of that happened. Now that LaRose had actually arrived and it was time for action, Abdullah the terrorist was suddenly hedging, dodging, equivocating, pleading for patience.

Two weeks into her visit to Amsterdam, LaRose concluded that Abdullah was a poseur. It was time for her to leave, she told him, and Abdullah quickly agreed. He suggested that she visit his associate in Waterford, Ireland, the man who called himself Black Flag.

LaRose packed her bags.

/

Mohammed Khalid is seen in his 2011 high school yearbook senior portrait, from Mount Hebron High School in Ellicott City, Md.

Calling 911

Back in the United States, one of LaRose's most trusted allies was struggling, too.

Mohammed Hassan Khalid had lost access to his primary weapon of jihad: his computer. His parents took it away.

It happened a few weeks into the boy's junior year in high school, after Khalid's parents confronted him about the long stretches he spent alone in his bedroom with his laptop. They suspected he was trolling for porn.

When Khalid refused to explain what he was doing, his parents grabbed his computer. Khalid threw a tantrum but they wouldn't give it back.

Then, this aspiring jihadist, who knew that his friend LaRose had twice been visited by the FBI, made an odd and impulsive choice: He dialed 911 and invited law enforcement into his home. His parents, he told the dispatcher, were abusive.

When police arrived, the officers backed the parents. Only after authorities left and Khalid gave his parents his password would they begin clicking through his computer. They discovered his al-Qaida translation projects and jihadi videos.

As the teenager later wrote to a friend, they "saw the beheadings, which scared the crap out of them."

Stripped of access to his online life, Khalid soon became despondent. He refused to eat. He slept all day. After a few days, his parents dialed 911 themselves and had Khalid admitted overnight to a psychiatric facility.

The boy told no one about Eagle Eye, Jihad Jane, Black Flag, or the stolen passports LaRose had sent him for safekeeping - including the one he had forwarded to Black Flag in Ireland.

‘No matter the risk’
Waterford seems an unlikely place to launch a jihad.

Founded by Vikings and renowned for its crystal, the southern Irish city is far more tranquil than Dublin or Cork. Only a few hundred Muslims live there, many who immigrated for jobs at the regional hospital. To create a mosque, local Muslims converted a suburban home near the hospital.

/

Jamie Paulin Ramirez is seen in an undated family handout photo obtained from her family by the Leadville (Colo.) Herald at the time of her terrorism arrest in 2010.

Yet the city became the confluence of the Jihad Jane conspiracy. Here, in September 2009, Black Flag met his two prized recruits in person for the first time: LaRose and Jamie Paulin Ramirez, the lonely Colorado woman whom he had persuaded to come by telling her that Allah had willed it in a dream.

Both women were Americans -- white, blonde and recent converts to Islam. And though they had often chatted online, neither knew that the other was coming.

Short but thin and handsome, Black Flag was known in Waterford by his given name, Ali Damache. Born in Algeria in 1965, Damache grew up in central France. After high school, he sold perfume and cosmetics in the women's section of a Paris department store for many years. Around 2001, he moved to southern Ireland.

Damache bounced from sales job to sales job -- he worked at a drug store, a telephone call center, a real estate agency and an insurance firm. To comply with Irish welfare and immigration law, each time he lost a job he enrolled in computer-training programs, giving him access to computers and a reason to spend a lot of time online.

He wed an Irish Catholic woman, a marriage that lasted about seven years. In 2007, Damache began regularly going to mosque and, about a year later, wearing Muslim attire.

By 2009, Damache was calling himself Black Flag. Online, he made contact with Eagle Eye, LaRose, Ramirez, Khalid, Abdullah and others whom the FBI has linked to al-Qaida cells.

Family photo via Reuters, file

Colleen LaRose, who pleaded guilty to U.S. federal terrorism charges for her actions as "Jihad Jane," is seen in an undated family photo.

Throughout the summer, even after LaRose tipped him that the FBI was watching, Damache continued to send online messages that U.S. authorities say place him at the hub of the conspiracy.

"The job is to knock down some individuals that are harming Islam," Damache explained to a friend in Europe. He was busy building "an organization," he wrote, divided into a "planning team … research team … action team … recruitment team … finance team."

Damache wrote breathlessly of his plans for LaRose. "We have already organized everything for her. We are wil(ing)l to die in order to protect her no matter what the risk."

‘So close'
LaRose and Ramirez each landed in Ireland within days of the other, during the second week of September. On the day she arrived, Ramirez married Damache.

There would be no honeymoon.

Instead, with Ramirez's young son, they all stayed in a one-bedroom apartment Damache rented in the heart of Waterford. The flat stood steps from upscale Italian and Chinese restaurants and the city archives, on a neat, narrow street close to the central shopping mall, riverfront and Catholic church.

The sleeping arrangements proved awkward. At times, the women stayed with the boy in the living room; Damache took the bedroom for himself.

Andrew Lampard / Reuters file

A view of the entrance to Ali Damache's former apartment, where Colleen LaRose, known as "Jihad Jane" stayed in the town of Waterford, Ireland.

Despite the unorthodox accommodations, LaRose remained committed to the notion of killing the Swedish artist. With little direction, she was doing what she could, tracking her target the only way she knew how: online.

To try to learn more about Vilks, for example, she signed up for a virtual community he had created. Filling out the online form, LaRose typed a false name - - Sally Jones -- and created a new Gmail account.

She also left a clue that underscored her sloppiness. In the postal code section of the online form, she typed 48174 -- the zip code for Romulus, Mich., her childhood home.

Damache gave LaRose a key to the Waterford apartment, and she was free to come and go. Ramirez focused on supporting her new husband's activities, whatever they were. She didn't get a key and was instructed to remain at home, to cook and to clean.

Local Muslim women took LaRose to the mosque and taught her how to pray. The first time she rose after praying, LaRose experienced what she believed to be a minor miracle. A persistent pain in her stomach, one that had bothered her for years, simply vanished. LaRose was astonished. What more proof did she need that Islam could heal her?

Her faith in the jihad was another story. In the weeks that followed, nothing materialized the way Damache had promised. No training, no planning, no brothers and sisters waiting to join her in assassination. To LaRose, the great Black Flag seemed nearly as unmoored as she was -- chronically unemployed, spouting verses from the Quran to justify whatever he chose to do, hiding his cowardice behind his beard.

LaRose still refused to give up her jihad. On the last day of September, she emailed Eagle Eye to let him know she remained on task and that it would be "an honor & great pleasure to kill" the artist.

"Only death will stop me here," LaRose wrote. "I am so close to the target!"

She hadn't trained as an assassin and she hadn't traveled to Sweden. But she was back on Muslima.com, the Islamic dating site, hoping to find someone who might put her up in Sweden  -- should she ever get there.

The epiphany
Two weeks after promising that "only death" would stop her plans to kill for Allah, Jihad Jane decided to head home.

The epiphany came while she waited with a Muslim woman in a delivery truck outside a grocery in Waterford. The two women were covered head to toe. Only their eyes showed. The woman's husband was inside shopping.

Sitting in the truck, LaRose considered the woman's life. She had a husband, children, a family and a bond with Allah. The woman seemed happy, LaRose thought. And she wanted that sort of happiness, too.

LaRose considered Damache and Abdullah again. Online, the men were aggressive, tough-talking jihadists, romantic, almost heroic. In person - - in reality - they were tentative, chauvinistic and, perhaps most telling, hobbled by pedestrian struggles like finding enough cash to pay the electric bill.

LaRose asked the woman waiting with her in the truck what she thought of Damache. The woman replied that her husband believed LaRose was a lost soul and that Damache had misled her. Perhaps Vilks, the Swedish artist, did deserve to die, but that was up to Allah, not Damache, to decide, she said.

The woman and her husband were the first Muslims LaRose had met who did not advocate violence. They were wonderful, deeply religious people, and they held a starkly different version of Islam than the likes of Eagle Eye and Black Flag.

LaRose considered all this, sitting in the truck. Again, she felt torn. She wanted to please Eagle Eye, but nothing, not a single thing she had been promised, had worked out.

She was also growing lonely and missed her longtime boyfriend back in Pennsylvania. She wondered who was caring for her elderly mother. She thought about her cats, Fluffy and Klaus.

Jihad Jane was homesick.

She emailed her boyfriend with her new Irish mobile number. A short while later, he called. Come home, he urged. Your mother is ill, near death.

Today, LaRose insists that she wasn't abandoning her jihad, only pausing to visit a sick relative.

If so, what this budding terrorist did next is perplexing: She visited the FBI's website, located the send-a-tip section and let agents know she was heading home.

Read previous installments

Part 1: From abuse victim to terrorist wannabe

Part 2: A vow is confirmed; a terror plot grows

The reason? She hoped the FBI would pay for her flight.

When LaRose got no response, she called her boyfriend back and he bought her ticket.

Damache tried to talk her out of leaving. He pleaded for patience, but LaRose insisted she needed to return to care for her sick mother.

LaRose said goodbye to Ramirez and her son, and reluctantly, Damache agreed to drive her to the airport in Cork. It was a two-hour trip along scenic and often rural roads.

Unannounced, Damache brought a husky friend along for the ride, a man LaRose had never met.

As the car left Waterford, LaRose grew suspicious. They were never going to let her go back to the United States, she thought. She knew too much  -- where they lived, what they were planning, everything.

They weren't driving her to the airport, she thought. It was all a setup.

They were going to make Jihad Jane disappear.

Read Part 4: ‘It's my destiny'

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Mona Shafer Edwards / AP

This Sept. 27 courtroom sketch shows Mark Basseley Youssef, right, talking with his attorney Steven Seiden in court. Youssef was behind an anti-Muslim film that sparked violence in the Middle East.

Updated at 5:44 p.m. ET: LOS ANGELES -- A California man who was behind an anti-Muslim film that sparked violent protests in the Middle East denied on Wednesday he violated his probation stemming from a 2010 bank fraud conviction. 

U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder ruled that Mark Basseley Youssef will remain in custody and scheduled an evidentiary hearing for Nov. 9. 

Youssef, 55, has been in a federal detention center since Sept. 28 after he was arrested for eight probation violations and deemed a flight risk by another judge. Prosecutors said Youssef lied to his probation officers about his real name and used aliases. 

Youssef answered "deny" eight times when the judge asked him to respond to the allegations, which include lying to the probation officer about his role in the making of the controversial 13-minute "Innocence of Muslims" movie clip.

Youssef fled his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos and went into hiding when violence erupted in Egypt on Sept. 11 over the trailer of "Innocence of Muslims" that was posted on YouTube. The trailer depicts Mohammad as a religious fraud, womanizer and pedophile.

The unrest spread, killing dozens, and enraged Muslims have demanded severe punishment for Youssef, with a Pakistani cabinet minister offering $100,000 to anyone who kills him. The violence coincided with a separate attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com

Youssef's attorney, Steven Seiden, asked the court during Wednesday's brief hearing that his client be taken out of protective custody at the federal prison and released into the general population. Snyder ordered the prosecutor to meet with personnel at the federal Bureau of Prisons to determine whether that can be done, Southern California Public Radio reported.

"My client was not the cause of the violence in the Middle East," Seiden said after Wednesday's hearing. "Clearly, it was pre-planned and it was just an excuse and a trigger point to have more violence."   

Youssef, a Christian originally from Egypt, was convicted of bank fraud in 2010 and sentenced to 21 months in prison. After he was freed, he was barred from using computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer. He also wasn't supposed to use any name other than his true legal name without the prior written approval of his probation officer.   

"It will be interesting to see what the judge does and what the reaction is around the world,'' Stan Goldman, a Loyola Law School professor, told Reuters.    

Goldman said attorneys for Youssef could argue the terms of his 2011 release from prison did not apply directly to his recent activities, in which people associated with the film have said he misrepresented himself.  

"It's not exactly like an armed robber on probation, getting caught with an automatic weapon in his possession. It's a little more technical,'' Goldman said.

At least three names have been associated with Youssef since the film trailer surfaced -- Sam Bacile, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and Youssef.   

Court documents show Youssef legally changed his name from Nakoula in 2002, but he never told federal authorities while he was being prosecuted for check fraud. Orange County Superior Court documents show he wanted the change because he believed Nakoula sounded like a girl's name.   

Youssef sought a passport in his new name but still had a California driver's license as Nakoula, authorities said.   

Authorities said Youssef used more than a dozen aliases and opened about 60 bank accounts and had more than 600 credit and debit cards to conduct the check fraud scheme.   

Bacile was the name attached to the YouTube account that posted the video.

The probation issues were the latest of Youssef's legal woes. Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress who says she was duped into appearing in the anti-Islam film, has sued him, identifying him as the film's producer. Garcia also named YouTube and its parent company Google as defendants.   

Google has refused to remove the film from YouTube, despite pressure from the White House and others, though the company has blocked the trailer in Egypt, Libya and other Muslim countries.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Courtesy of The Toledo Blade

A security video captures an image of a man -- believed to be Randy Linn, 52, of Indiana -- who lingered outside the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo as a fire burned inside. Linn was charged Wednesday.

Police have arrested a man they believe set fire to the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo on Sunday, the Toledo Blade reported.

Randy Linn, 52, of Saint Joe, Indiana, was charged Wednesday with two counts of arson and one count each of aggravated burglary and carrying a concealed weapon. The arson was the latest in a string of recent acts of violence, vandalism and threats against mosques since July, the beginning of Ramadan, a month of fasting for Muslims.

The arson is the latest in a string of threats and vandalism against U.S. mosques since last summer, including a mosque in Joplin, Mo. that burned down in early August – one month after it was the target of another apparent arson.

Related: Mosque in Missouri burns to the ground one month after arson attack 

 According to Thom Harmann, host of The Big Picture, the number of anti-Muslim hate groups tripled between 2010 and 2011. Since Aug. 5, nine mosques or places of worship have been vandalized or attacked across the U.S., according to the non-profit, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

In Hayward, Calif., four people fired lemons, oranges, eggs and BB guns at a mosque. In Ontario, Calif., two women reportedly threw pig legs on the site of a proposed mosque, according to the ADC.

Allen County Sherriff Dept.

Randy Linn, 52, was charged Wednesday in the arson of an Islamic center in Ohio.

On Aug. 12 in Oklahoma City, vandals shot paintballs at the Grand Mosque while worshipers prayed, according to the Tulsa World.

Previously, in January, a man threw a firebomb into a mosque in Queens, N.Y., according to NBCNewYork.com. There were no injuries.

"We recommend a security guard during prayer hours,” Abed Ayoub, ADC’s legal director told NBC News. "Take measures and use common sense. Keep an eye on people who don’t seem to fit in. We ask them to install video cameras at the doors and throughout the mosque. Limit access to areas such as the kitchen, furnace or storage where someone could hide."

Related: Attacks on US mosques prompt Muslim security concerns

Back in Ohio, Linn was captured by a surveillance camera as he lingered outside the Islamic center at the time of the fire, according to the Blade. Most of the smoke and water damage took place on the second floor of the prayer room, officials told the Blade.

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Nightly News

Actress Cindy Lee Garcia has sued a California man believed to have produced a video ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad. She says she was misled into believing the movie was about ancient Egyptians.

An actress who appeared briefly in a movie that parodied the Prophet Muhammad and that triggered protests across the Islamic world sued a California man believed to have produced the video, saying she was misled to believe the video was a desert adventure movie about ancient Egyptians.

Actress Cindy Lee Garcia also named Google and YouTube (owned by Google) as defendants, citing invasion of privacy and other allegations. The lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court also requested that the video, titled the “Innocence of Muslims,” be removed from the Internet.

Garcia said the video has caused her great distress, the Los Angeles Times reported, and that she has received “credible death threats” and has been banned from caring for her grandchildren. She said in the filing that she was also fired from her job.

“This is not a First Amendment issue,” Garcia’s attorney, M. Cris Armenta said, according to the LA Times. “This is an invasion of privacy issue.”

The movie was shown at a theater in Los Angeles three months ago with fewer than 10 people in attendance, the LA Times reported. The movie, a seemingly low-budget and cartoonish production, depicts Muhammad as moronic, childish and obsessed with sex. In one scene, the actor playing the role of the prophet places his head between the legs of Garcia’s character.

It wasn’t until a week ago that clips began circulating online and were broadcast on Egyptian media, sparking protests against the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the U.S. Consulate in Libya. The attacks on the consulate resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Related: US Ambassador Chris Stevens was ‘courageous and exemplary,’ Obama says

Protests have spread to Tunisia and Australia, ranging from peaceful to violent. Seventeen people have been killed to date.

Since the protests began, a French satirical magazine produced cartoons that lampooned the prophet, triggering more outrage. In response, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, based in Saudi Arabia, has called for insults against religions to be made an international offense. The organization says that "growing intolerance towards Muslims" had to be checked and called for "an international code of conduct for media and social media to disallow the dissemination of inciteful material."

Related: Christian activist says he was deceived over anti-Islam film

Garcia claims that she was tricked by a filmmaker who went by the name Sam Bacile. His real name is Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Egypt-born Coptic Christian who lives in Los Angeles. He is on probation for convictions relating to federal financial crimes and was twice sentenced in the 1990s on drug charges, NBC News reported.

The actress did not know there would be references to religion or any sexual content, the LA Times reported.

"It looks so unreal to me, it's like nothing that we even filmed was there," Garcia told Reuters in a phone interview. "There was all this weird stuff there." 

An expired casting notice at Backstage.com listed a film named "Desert Warrior" that it described as a low-budget "historical Arabian Desert adventure film." None of the characters were identified in the casting call as Mohammad.

"They told me it was based on what it was like 2,000 years ago at the time of the Lord," Garcia said. "Like the time Christ was here."

NBC's Isolde Raftery contributed reporting.

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An ad initially rejected in New York City for its "demeaning'' language about Islam is expected to appear at 10 subway stations next week.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Aaron Donovan told The New York Times that "our hands are tied.'' 

A Manhattan federal court judge ruled in July that the MTA violated the First Amendment rights of the ad's sponsor, The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), and must let the ad appear, NBCNewYork.com reported.

The ad states: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.'' It adds, "Support Israel. Defeat Jihad,'' in between two Stars of David.  

Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com

The group also bought ad space in Washington D.C., where the transit authority there told the Times that it had "deferred" the ad’s placement "out of a concern for public safety, given current world events."

The group's ad appeared on public buses in San Francisco in August. The transit agency there, known as Muni, said it would donate the $3,400 ad revenue to the city's Human Rights Commission and place an ad next to AFDI's message to say "Muni doesn't support this message," local media reported at the time.

Golden Gate Bridge transit district, which provides bus and ferry service between San Francisco and suburbs to the north, rejected the ads at a Sept. 7 board meeting by adopting a policy banning religious and political ads.

Pamela Geller, executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, said in an email to the Times that that transit officials in Washington were "kowtowing to the threat of jihad terrorism."

Recent events in the Middle East have not given her pause "for a second" about posting the ads in New York, she told the Times. "I will never cower before violent intimidation and stop telling the truth because doing so is dangerous," Geller said. "Freedom must be vigorously defended."

"If someone commits violence, it is his responsibility and no one else’s," she added.

The Southern Poverty Law Center branded Geller "the anti-Muslim movement's most visible and flamboyant figurehead" and AFDI as a hate group.

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The Anti-Defamation League said in March that Geller "fuels and fosters anti-Muslim bigotry in society."

Muneer Awad, the executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the Times the ads were an attempt to "define Muslims" through hate speech.

"It’s perfectly legal to be a bigot and to be a racist," he said. "We want to make sure there’s a counter-voice."

Donovan said the MTA might consider revising its ad policy at its board meeting next week.

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WASHINGTON -- An American Coptic Christian activist whose California TV facility was used to make an anti-Islam film that touched off protests across the Muslim world said he was deceived by the film's producer about its inflammatory content. 

In a statement posted on the blog of a prominent American anti-Islamic activist, Joseph Nassralla, founder of a Duarte, California-based group called Media for Christ, said he was a victim of "disinformation and smear" and the film's principal producer had altered its content without his knowledge. 

Slideshow: Anti-U.S. protests rock Mideast, Asia and northeast Africa

Akhtar Soomro / Reuters

Protests ignited by a controversial film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad spread throughout Muslim world.

Launch slideshow

Media for Christ operates a Christian satellite TV station called The Way TV, according to its website and tax return. 

Nassralla said he was contacted last year by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, whom he described as the film's producer, with a plan to make a film about the persecution of Christians in Egypt. 

Nakoula, who has a criminal record for bank fraud and drug offenses, was briefly questioned last weekend by federal authorities about possible probation violations. He was later released and has gone into hiding. 

Nassralla said in his statement that in explaining his film project, Nakoula had said the film would be called "Desert Warrior" and would "examine the culture of the desert and how it is related to what is going on right now." 

The statement was posted on the website Atlasshrugs2000, which is run by Pamela Geller, an activist who has organized anti-Islamic protests and events, including demonstrations opposing construction of an Islamic center near the site of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. 

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There was no way to independently confirm Nassralla's account. 

An attorney representing Nakoula in the investigation by probation officials declined to comment on Nassralla's statement, saying he was aware of the blog post but had not had a chance to discuss it with his client. He said Nakoula or his representatives may issue a statement in the future. 

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Nassralla, who spoke at two rallies in 2010 and 2011 organized by Geller, said Nakoula "needed a place to film. So I let him use my facility." 

"That is all I did, and is the full extent of my involvement with this project. Nakoula used my facility for ten days. Media for Christ employees were given a vacation during that time, because Nakoula was using the facility and so there was no work for them. There was only one Media for Christ employee who remained, to answer phones for the ministry," Nassralla said. 

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There was no sign of activity at the small studios of Media for Christ, located in a nondescript office park behind a Walmart store in suburban Duarte, during two visits last week by a Reuters reporter. 

On both occasions the doors were found locked and knocks went unanswered. A woman who worked at an office next door said she had not seen any employees there in recent days. 

Nassralla said he later discovered that Nakoula, using the name "Sam Bacile," had used Media for Christ's name without his permission to obtain an official permit for making the film.

'We were shocked'
After accounts of the film began circulating in Egypt and other Muslim majority countries, the amateurish production -- which portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer and a fool -- set off a chain of violent protests and attacks on U.S. and other Western embassies in the Middle East and North Africa. 

In his statement, Nassralla said Nakoula had "filmed his movie not only at my ministry location, but in Nakoula's own home (which reporters located by getting the address from the actors), and in another facility for outside scenes that was included in the permit, Blue Canyon." 

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Nassralla also said that behind his back, Nakoula had "altered the film without anyone's knowledge, changing its entire focus and dubbing in new dialogue. He edited it." 

"The final product, 'Innocence of Muslims,' bore no resemblance to the film I thought he was making, or the film the actors thought they were creating. We were shocked," Nassralla said. 

In an introduction to Nassralla's statement, Geller said that she had last seen him at an event in June in California, and that now he was being "hunted like an animal for speaking critically about Islam." 

Nassralla "is currently in hiding after multiple death threats from Muslims because of his purported role in producing this video," she said. 

In an exchange of emails with Reuters last weekend, Geller suggested that if Nakoula was arrested, that would represent an attempt to impose strict Islamic Sharia law in the United States. 

"He will not be in prison for fraud or some probation violation, but for blasphemy. This is Shariah enforcement in America," she said. 

In a later email, however, Geller expressed disappointment over Nassralla's account of his dealings with Nakoula. But she added, "That would not make (Nakoula) any less a political prisoner." 

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Chris Carlson / AP file

Soha Yassine attends an event held by Muslim and Coptic Christian leaders in Los Angeles on Monday condemning extremists they say are behind an anti-Islam film, and behind the violent reaction to it in the past week.

American Muslims, sometimes accused of failing to speak out against violence carried out in the name of their religion, have forcefully condemned both the amateurish anti-Islam film that triggered recent riots and protest in the Middle East, Asia and north Africa and the violence that it engendered.

"The American Muslim community has been very forceful and consistent in its rejection of a violent response to this intentionally provocative material," said Ibrahim Hooper, director of communications for the Council on American Islamic Relations, a nonprofit Muslim civil rights and advocacy group.

The low-budget film "Innocence of Muslims," apparently made by an obscure producer in Los Angeles and circulated on YouTube, infuriated many Muslims with its cartoonish portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. The imagery sparked Muslim protests and violence targeting U.S. diplomatic missions, including a deadly assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

In a flurry of statements, press briefings, vigils, media interviews and interfaith events, groups representing American Muslims were quick to condemn the violence, host vigils for the victims and send condolences to the families of the Benghazi victims.  But they also condemned the film, which seems deliberately designed to anger Muslims.

In getting the initial response out, there was an opportunity to make two points, said Hooper.

"People here understand that America and Americans shouldn’t be blamed for the actions of a few individuals who produced this hate film," said Hooper. "They should also understand that all Muslims shouldn’t be blamed for the acts of a few individuals that carried out these attacks as well."

The Muslim and Arab American leaders also sought to speak to an overseas audience.

Over the weekend, CAIR released an Arabic-language video appeal aimed at protesters, beseeching them not to blame ordinary Americans and the U.S. government for the film, which was "designed to provoke religious sensitivities and to distract from the positive efforts being undertaken to improve newly-free societies in the wake of the Arab Spring."

Quoting from the Quran, the speaker, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad called on protesters "to emulate Islam's Prophet Muhammad, who did not retaliate in kind to personal abuse."

On Tuesday, the organization released a similar video narrated by Imam Agdu Semih Tadese in Yoruba, a language spoken by millions in Nigeria and elsewhere in West Africa.

"It is clear that the motive behind the film is to enrage Muslims and to display a hatred of Islam," according to subtitles on the video.
"However, Muslims need to demonstrate good behavior as our Prophet (peace be upon him) dealt harmoniously with people. I hereby appeal to our scholars to calm down the youth and encourage people to cultivate exemplary behavior as Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) teaches."

Lesson in freedom of speech
These messages and others also attempt to explain freedom of speech to non-Americans.

"We play a significant role in translating for our fellow Arabs and Muslims in the region to let them know what the First Amendment rights are," said Abed Ayoub, legal director for the Arab-American Anti-Defamation Committee, a 32-year-old civil rights organization.

Since the start of protests, Ayoub says ADC has spoken to dozens of Arab journalists in countries where freedom of speech is still an alien concept. The challenge, he said, is to dispel their belief that this film, or any other form of expression, has the U.S. government’s stamp of approval.

"These individuals have been living under dictatorships for decades. Some of them just don’t get it," said Ayoub.

On the steps of Los Angeles City Hall on Monday, Muslim leaders teamed up with elders from the Coptic Christian church to try to reclaim the stage from the presumptive filmmaker — an Egypt-born Coptic Christian named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula — and hotheaded Islamists inciting violence.

The stakes are particularly high in Egypt, where the Copts say they have suffered a recent surge in discrimination and attacks by extremist Muslims. The Copts form a branch of Christians who are believed to have settled in Egypt shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus. Moderates in both religions say they want to return to the relative peace between Coptics and Muslim, populations that have coexisted for centuries.

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'Minds full of disease'
"We cannot allow the actions of a few deceived fanatical individuals to define our communities," said Bishop Serapion of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles, who took aim at both the desecration of Islam by filmmakers and the violence of protesters.

Handout photo provided by Newsweek Sept. 18, 2012

He was echoed by Maher Hathout, a co-founder of Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles, which hosted the event.

"These people are neither Muslims nor Copts. Those are people ... with hearts full of hate and minds full of disease," Hathout told the crowd. "Our job together is to leave no room for these voices to manipulate and take over the arena. The voice that should be heard is our collective voices here."

Satirical take
Everyday residents in the U.S. and elsewhere also are seeking to join the debate, using Twitter and other social media to distribute more cosmopolitan and diverse views to the global audience. 

Many seized on a Newsweek cover story this week titled "Muslim Rage," which accompanied by an unflattering image of screaming Muslim men. The article by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a well-known critic of Islam, asserts that while some Muslims condemn the killings in the name of the faith, those voices tend to be marginalized. 

"The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support — whether actively or passively — the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group," writes Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born woman who fled to Holland to escape an arranged marriage. "On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam." 

Newsweek called its Twitter followers to comment under the hashtag "#muslimrage." The subject went wildly viral, but perhaps not in the way that the magazine had in mind.

Some of the tweets are insulting, some defensive, but many of the thousands of tweets seemed to ridicule Newsweek’s portrayal of Muslims and many — seemingly by Muslims — offered a lighter view of their "rage."

A sampling:

"My iPhone compass won't point me toward Mecca. #muslimrage"

"Sudden midseason change of scarf trends; all oblong hijabs go out of fashion. #MuslimRage"

"Brothers are super strict/overprotective bc they don't want not one guy to see you.#MuslimRage"

"When you need to pray at the mall and all the stores with the good fitting rooms are full.#MuslimRage"

"Walks into a building with a backpack on, whole building get evacuated. #MuslimRage"

"Lost nephew at the airport but can't yell for him because his name is Jihad. #MuslimRage."

The humorous response to #muslimrage was refreshing, according to Ayoub of ADC.

"It’s good because it shows maturity," he said. "You know that we are moving past this (stereotype) — that this is not representative of who we are."

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