A British Council
press officer who attacked Islam and Muslims in a national
newspaper has been sacked.
The organisation which funds cross-cultural projects
said Harry Cummins had been dismissed after an investigation.
Mr Cummins, under the name
Will Cummins, had sparked a furious response from Muslims
with four Sunday Telegraph articles in July.
He compared Muslims to
dogs and said Islam had a "black heart".
In a statement to the BBC,
a spokesman for the British Council, said the press officer
had now left the government-funded organisation.
"Following allegations
that a British Council employee had written a series of
articles in the Sunday Telegraph offensive to Islam, an
investigation has been carried out and a British Council
officer has been dismissed," it said.
Mr Cummins has been unavailable
for contact since he was first linked to the articles.
The British Council had earlier said the press officer
had denied being the author of the articles when first
confronted.
At the time, the organisation's
director general David Green had said the articles were
the antithesis of everything the 70-year-old organisation
had worked for.
Sacking welcomed
Abdul Bari, deputy secretary
general of the Muslim Council of Britain, welcomed the
decision.
"We commend the British Council for initiating their
investigation as soon as it was alleged that one of their
own employees was the author of these rabidly anti-Muslim
pieces," said Dr Bari.
"They have acted swiftly
and decisively to distance themselves from the poisonous
hatred espoused by Mr Cummins.
"We are, however,
dismayed that the Telegraph Group have yet to take any
action against the editor of the Sunday Telegraph [Dominic
Lawson]."
Internet campaign
Muslims flooded the British
Council and Sunday Telegraph with complaints after Mr
Cummins was first named in the Guardian newspaper. Much
of the campaigning was by the growing number of politically-active
Muslim groups rallying supporters via the internet.
A spokeswoman for the British
Council stressed that fostering understanding between
cultures and peoples "is our business". A huge
number of projects involving Islam and the western world
were continuing, including the Counterpoint cross-cultural
think tank project, she said.
The British Council recently
published a guide aimed at tackling press myths about
Islam. It continues to sponsor exchanges at all levels
of society between the UK and Muslim countries.
Mr Cummins wrote four columns
in the Sunday Telegraph, the first published on 4 July.
In his first article, Mr
Cummins said Muslims had rights to practice their religion
in the UK which were not available to Christians in the
Islamic world "despite the fact that these Christians
are the original inhabitants and rightful owners of almost
every Muslim land".
He said Muslims had displayed
a "bullying ingratitude that culminates in a terrorist
threat".
Another columnist on the
newspaper, Jenny McCartney, later attacked Mr Cummins'
articles, saying he had failed to "make the distinction
between the terrorist and the follower of a faith".
"If he could, he would
not have last week applied the offensive term 'Janjaweed'
- the name of the Arab Islamic militia massacring African
fellow-Muslims in western Sudan - to the British Muslim
voters of Leicester and Burnley," she wrote.
The newspaper has not published
any further articles since the investigation began at
the British Council. A spokesman for the Sunday Telegraph
declined to comment.
