The religion of Ibn Tufayl is a hybrid, a synthesis of mystical and rational religion. God is known first and most safely by reason, ultimately and most intensely by intuition, but calmly and constantly by a philosophical mind that seems to find no phenomenological distinction between the two. The relationship of man to God, in which the “oriental philosopher” wraps himself, wilāya, combines the intimate, intuitive understanding of friendship with the passion and immediacy of love; this uniting of reason and emotion marks the union of rational and mystic religion.
