Review of the Contemporary Mystical Debate on Simorgh’s Symbiotics

About 150 years ago, two famous Iranian mystic and jurisprudent Najaf seminary people debated the interpretation of one of the poems of Attar Nishabouri. In this chapter, we try to outline the key points of the dispute between these two Hercules of contemporary Islamic mysticism and then try to extract out of this debate a conception of the relation between the unity of God and the manifold and plurality in His creatures to introduce a type of symbiotic perspective of a man–God relationship. To explain the social and even political role of human beings in the journey toward the ethical community, we appeal to the metaphor of the mystical journey from thirty birds [si murgh] toward unified Simurgh. If every person in society does her role perfectly, they will reach the Qaaf of a good and unified society.