Refer me to one atheist who denies the existence of God. . . . Etymologically, as well as philosophically, an atheist is one without God. That is all the 'A' before 'Theist' really means.
Etymologically, 'patient' means sufferer.
I realized that the ignorance was profound. I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, it's just that people didn't know what the Shari'a was, as such. They knew that it was something good. I should say perhaps that the Shari'a, etymologically in Arabic, means a desert path to water. It means a path towards salvation, in the seventh-century context, to the desert people. If you have a path to water, that's the path you want to take to get you where you want to get to; where you should get to. And that much was clear but beyond that people didn't know what the rules were.