Did Amal Clooney Really Work for the Muslim Brotherhood?
A throwaway line on a US chat show has been doing the rounds online, repackaged into a far more dramatic claim: that Amal Clooney “worked for the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The spark came from George Clooney’s interview with Drew Barrymore, where he joked that when he was trying to impress Amal early in their relationship, she was busy at “a meeting at the Muslim Brotherhood” working on constitutional issues. Cue the internet doing what it does best with nuance: deleting it.
Here are the actual, inconvenient facts.
Amal Clooney is a London-based international human rights barrister. Her verified work in Egypt includes co-authoring a 2014 International Bar Association report sharply criticising Egypt’s judicial system, including politicised trials, executive interference, and the selection of judges for sensitive cases.
She also famously represented Al Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy, who was convicted under Egypt’s post-Morsi crackdown on the basis that he allegedly “aided the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.” The case was widely condemned by international governments and press freedom groups as a show trial. Clooney’s role was defending due process and attacking the legality of the conviction rather than acting for the Brotherhood.
In a separate interview, George Clooney himself clarified that Amal was actually “holding the Muslim Brotherhood to account” in the work he referenced. That detail rarely survives the viral edits.
Amal Clooney’s publicly listed cases span Armenia, Yazidi genocide victims, Julian Assange, Maria Ressa, the Maldives opposition and Ukraine. The Muslim Brotherhood does not appear on that list.
For lawyers, the lesson is familiar: if you work near controversial power, the facts matter less than the headline someone wants to write about you. In this case of the Clooneys, (remember the Joe Biden support, followed by the NY Times opinion piece saying it might be time up for the guy), the left wing causes prevail – but perhaps not as much as some media describe.
