This Arabic lectionary is a trace of the pre-Islamic, Christian past of certain Arab communities, who were amongst the first Christians.

It looked to Egypt's pre-Islamic past and argued that Egypt was part of a larger Mediterranean civilization.

By the late 19th century French archaeologists were undertaking an intensive effort to uncover north-west Africa's pre-Islamic past through excavations and restorations of archaeological sites.

In all cases Islamization led to a people's near total rejection of their pagan, pre-Islamic past, such that their ancestral achievements and heritage were either forgotten or actively denigrated.

Acceptance in Pakistan of futūḥ "salvation history" can be seen in current expressions of alienation from both the political as well as cultural legacies of its pre-Islamic past:

Among the appeals from around the world to save the statues, many of them priceless antiques dating from Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past, have been offers to buy and remove them rather than see them destroyed.

Now it is waging war on the country's cultural heritage, blowing up treasured statues from Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past.

This imperative, plus the fact that much of the material is contradictory make such asbāb useful only for reconstructing the development of Islamic ideology and identity, rather than the pre-Islamic Arabian past.

There conversion to Islam is said to have taken over two to three centuries, and the Nashya still retain many cultural traits of their pre-Islamic past.

Almost immediately, the clerical regime began a vigorous campaign to cleanse the new Islamic Republic of all references not just to the Pahlavis but more generally to the country's pre-Islamic past.