\n\n\nEARLIER this year Iran\u2019s authorities arrested a score of men who, in \nseparate incidents, claimed to be the Mahdi, a sacred figure of Shia \nIslam, who was \u201chidden\u201d by God just over a millennium ago and will \nreturn some time to conquer evil on earth. A website based in Qom, \nIran\u2019s holiest city, deemed the men \u201cdeviants\u201d, \u201cfortune-tellers\u201d and \n\u201cpetty criminals\u201d, who were exploiting credulous Iranians for alms \nduring the Persian new-year holiday, which fell in mid-March. Many of \nthe fake messiahs were picked up by security men in the courtyard to the\n mosque in Jamkaran, a village near Qom, whose reputation as the place \nof the awaited Mahdi\u2019s advent has been popularised nationwide by \nPresident Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. When he took office in 2005 he gave the \nmosque $10m.
\nLast year a seminary expert, Mehdi Ghafari, said that more than 3,000\n fake Mahdis were in prison. Mahdi-complexes are common, says a Tehran \npsychiatrist. \u201cEvery month we get someone coming in, convinced he is the\n Mahdi,\u201d she says. \u201cOnce a man was saying such outrageous things and \ntalking about himself in the third person that I couldn\u2019t help laughing.\n He got angry and told me I had \u2018bad hijab\u2019 and was disrespecting the \n\u2018Imam of Time\u2019,\u201d as the Mahdi is known.
\nMr Ahmadinejad has called his administration \u201cthe government of the \nhidden imam\u201d. Last month he told a batch of new Iranian ambassadors to \nconsider themselves \u201cenvoys of the Mahdi\u201d. After his first speech at the\n UN in 2005, a video circulated showing Mr Ahmadinejad telling a leading\n Iranian cleric that world leaders had been enchanted, during his \noration, by a halo around his head that had been put there by the Mahdi \nhimself.
(Source, emphasis mine)
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That\u2019s seriously one of my best arguments for Batman as the modern incarnation of God - street crazies claim to be him the same way they once claimed Jesus or King David or Napoleon or, apparently, the Mahdi.
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