Whether or not the notion of the world as made of civilizations in varying degrees of alliance or conflict is valid, and however reliable or unreliable the idea of an 'Islamic World' or a 'Western World', it is an indisputable reality that there are histories and institutions that are described by and purport to be 'of the West' and 'of Islam'. Indeed, it is commonplace in discourse about international affairs to refer to Islam and the West as distinguishable by values and the 57 nations that comprise the Organization of the Islamic Conference (the OIC) and the 47 nations that comprise the Council of Europe (COE) purport to represent the values respectively of Islam and the West. As usually expressed, however, the frequently used comparative values individualism, piety, liberalism, rule of law, family, abstemiousness and so on are, epistemologically, arguably worthless. Can values be identified for Islam and the West that provide an epistemologically valid distinction? When the OIC and the COE are analysed by reference to what they say and do, the analysis being tested for consistency against the historical origins of these organizations, a case can be made that epistemologically useful respective values can be identified. Thus, for each of the person who will be referred to as 'the Muslim Man' and the person who will be referred to as 'the Western Man', there is distinct doctrine and practice. The doctrine and practice of the Muslim Man extol a virtue of conviction. The doctrine and practice of the Western Man extol a virtue of doubt. For the Muslim Man conviction is unconditional, for the Western Man conviction is contingent; the one enjoys unconditional certainty, the legacy of a revelation; the other suffers reservation, the legacy of an experience of error. What for one is a virtue, for the other is a vice. Their respective dispositions are mutually exclusive.
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