“Nice country you’ve got here. Shame if anything was to happen to it…”

Anger within Britain's Muslim communities over the Gaza conflict has reached "acute levels of intensity" that could have repercussions for national security, leading Muslims will warn Gordon Brown today.

I’d like to think the response will be suitably robust, but Gordon Brown merely wrote a book on courage – there’s no evidence he possesses any…

In a letter to the prime minister, representatives of Muslim organisations will say the Israeli government's use of "disproportionate force" to combat threats to its security has "revived extremist groups" and "empowered their message of violence and perennial conflict".

Because up until then, they’d been quietly sitting at home, knitting booties for orphaned kittens and composing poetry…?

Among the signatories are Dr Usama Hasan, imam of Al-Tawhid mosque, London, Dilwar Hussain, head of the policy research centre at the Islamic Foundation, Zareen Roohi Ahmed from the British Muslim Forum and Ed Husain, co-director of the anti-extremism thinktank the Quilliam Foundation.

All are active in tackling extremism in the UK and overseas.

How…? By telling their ‘communities’ that they will speak on their behalf, and using the threat of their young hotheads to get what they want from Western governments?

Their intervention follows a meeting on Tuesday between Bill Rammell, foreign and commonwealth affairs minister, and 30 people drawn from Muslim organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Islamic Society of Britain.

In what was said to be a testy meeting, representatives told Rammell the government's position on Gaza could provoke UK terrorist attacks. One of those present was Dr Hany el-Banna, youth worker and co-founder and president of the charity Islamic Relief.

He told the Guardian: "We are all working tirelessly to try and cool them down. I am telling them to change and bring something positive, but they see these images and they trigger extremist thoughts in the simplest individuals. Many millions of people will see these images in the media, what do you think the affect (sic – this is the ‘Guardian’!) will be?

"The government is responsible for the country and its foreign policy. I don't want something to happen here."

There you are – the value of dealing with ‘community representatives’ in a nutshell; when push comes to shove, and they’ve taken the government handouts and been wined and dined and feted at taxpayer expense, they throw up their hands and say ‘Oh, well, we can’t stop them, they are just inflamed by what they see on the TV! Do as we say and maybe they’ll stop…”

Time to cut off the funding and point out to these useless leeches that any attempt to stir up trouble in the UK over the actions of another country will be met with the strongest possible response.

And to start to target the real threats to our society.

Or we could continue to appease these ‘community leaders’ and harass middle-aged MPs taking photographs instead. Over to you, Brown.

Don’t screw this up like you have everything else…