How the Crocodile Hunter Became an Icon in the Middle East

When Steve Irwin died back in 2006, it sent my Facebook feed into a frenzy. Of course it did—all of Australia mourned the Crocodile Hunter. But what surprised me was that my family abroad were deeply devastated by his passing too. In fact, there were more posts on my feed from the Middle East than from my mates living down under. To find out even more about this bizarre phenomenon, I reflected on my own experiences with Steve, and contacted a few friends overseas to ask what it was about the guy that resisted cultural boundaries.

My friend Mukhtar, a 27-year-old from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, told me “[Steve] reminds me of the Pashtun warriors my father would tell me about when I was young. My father said mujahedeen commandos would fight the Russians from the mountains, and sometimes a snake would crawl onto their machine guns, but they would casually grab the venomous cobra and throw it away before continuing battle.” 

I thought that was pretty interesting. In Middle Eastern mythology and folklore, the hero is often depicted as a “wise fool”—a layman who tackles extraordinary feats with naive inquisitiveness. A classic example would be the Sufi Nasreddin Hodja, who wonders why tiny walnuts grow on giant oak trees, only to be struck on the head by one whilst napping. Steve Irwin’s Crocodile Hunter persona slotted perfectly into that wise fool archetype. Scruffy and affable, he never received a science degree. Instead he learned about animals in the wild, and it was that trademark childlike curiosity and enthusiasm which made his show so popular.

Mukhtar recalled a similar feeling. “The first time I saw The Crocodile Hunter on television,” he told me, “I was shocked by the brave display of courage. I could never do any of these things like wrestling with crocodiles in the rivers they call home. But when I saw The Crocodile Hunter, I learnt that we shouldn’t be scared of these animals, they come from the same place, we should just respect their home. They won’t hurt us if we don’t bother them. It is a very Afghan style; we are very hospitable and believe in placing our guests before ourselves.”

There was another very Afghan thing about Steve: his sense of humour. “Our culture is very funny and light-hearted,” Mukhtar told me. “That’s why we love Steve Irwin, he is a very funny warrior.”

Closer to home, I can remember watching The Crocodile Hunter after school with my dad. He would be glued to the television as Steve danced with cobras and black mambas, putting himself in situations we prayed we would never experience in our nightmares. It was something we bonded over, and, as I learned talking to my friend Assad from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, it was the same for him and his dad. 

“When I was a young boy, my father worked for a Sheikh up north, past Medina,” Assad recalls. “He worked as a labourer on his property. The Sheikh owned a lion that he raised as a cub. The family grew up with the lion and my father grew very attached to it, because he was responsible for feeding it. When the lion died, it deeply affected the whole family. My father told me he cried. My father would love watching The Crocodile Hunter, because it reminded him of his youth when he worked for the Sheikh, taming his animals.” 

“I never understood this kind of relationship with animals,” Assad went on, “to the point where people will cry like they lost a family member. But I cried when I heard the Crocodile Hunter died, it made me sad that a person who devoted his life to spreading a good message about dangerous animals was in the end punished for getting too close. I cried and prayed for him because I needed the answers. Why did this happen? Allah surely knows best, but it was very hard for me to understand.”

“Bindi Irwin is still my daughters hero,” Assad admits. “The family has made a big impact on our family and inshallah we hope to travel to his Zoo in Queensland one day.”

To me, Steve wasn’t just a snake-charmer; he brought himself down to the level of the serpents he handled, gained their trust and advocated for their rights as a species worthy of protection. There is an Afghan proverb that goes something like this: “They won’t help reptiles up because they fear being bitten,” Steve Irwin took that chance, quite literally, and led by example.

For Ali-Reza, a 24-year-old friend from Kerman, Iran, it was Steve’s unique type of activism that made him so engaging. “The death of the Crocodile Hunter was very shocking to my family,” he tells me. “I was worried that now the education for animal welfare would be greatly reduced because Steve Irwin had a very popular and exciting way of teaching. After watching The Crocodile Hunter, I knew I wanted to move away from the city. There was more to life then the crowds and the smoke and just working every day. I travelled to visit my mother’s parents in Golestan to walk around the jungles and trek the mountains.”

“The Crocodile Hunter show made me think it is important to experience wildlife and nature in the jungle, not in the zoo where you pay and see the animal in our environment,” Ali-Reza remembers. “I wanted to see them like he did, naturally in their home. But the sad thing is that in Iran, the Tigers are now extinct. My grandfather told me that they would once roam the Golestan jungles freely. Maybe if we had access to The Crocodile Hunter earlier we could benefit from the education and take care of the natural animals in our jungles.”

“We have so many problems in Iran it’s hard to concentrate on environmental issues,” he admits, “but The Crocodile Hunter taught us lessons the fun way, and that’s the way we need to be learning in Iran, not in books and science classes that make us drowsy. The Crocodile Hunter took us out there and showed us.”

Maybe the appeal of Steve Irwin, to a culture that has faced much discrimination, is the idea of a man from the West visiting other countries on a quest for knowledge, peace, and mutual understanding. In a society that’s suspicious of most Western celebrities, he was placed on a pedestal as an iconic hero: a courageous teacher á la Antarah ibn Shaddad.

Follow Mahmood on Instagram and Twitter.