Though this alienation may be partially explained by the Arab cultural imperialism implicit in Islamization (as exemplified in the adoption of the Arabic script, for example), there is a more direct theological rationale for this, which is the Islamic concept of jahiliyyah, or state of ignorance and barbarity which supposedly prevailed in pre-Islamic Arabia. Readily applied by the first Islamicized peoples to their own pagan pasts, it led them to view these epochs as times of rampant impiety, ignorance, and injustice from which little of value could be gleaned.