Gratitude and Ingratitude

According to Muslim authors, gratitude, shukr or shukūr, an attribute of God and of the virtuous man, entails recognising and openly appreciating any benefit received; moreover, it deals with scarcity repaid with abundance, with increase and multiplication, and in this sense the only Absolutely Grateful One is God. Being grateful towards God is an essential ingredient of faith; it follows that its opposite, ingratitude or kufrān, implies faithlessness or kufr. Furthermore, gratitude is to be understood as a social, and not only a religious, duty, in so far as a well-known Prophetic saying links ingratitude towards one's fellow men with ingratitude towards God.