maḥabba, riḍā, walāya
Three Arabic words the Māturīdī sources use where a Christian expects “love”: maḥabba (love, in God without change of state), riḍā (approval or good-pleasure), walāya (protective nearness to the faithful). The cluster names approval, favour and protection toward creatures — not reciprocal, equal-to-equal communion.
Arabic: maḥabba from ḥ-b-b, “to love”; riḍā, “contentment”; walāya from w-l-y, “to be near”.
Where a Christian theological text says "love," the Māturīdī sources distribute the work across three distinct terms. Maḥabba is love proper, predicated of God without affective change — early Māturīdī texts treat riḍā (approval, good-pleasure) and even wrath as real attributes while denying that God undergoes states. Walāya is protective nearness: God as walī of the believers (Q 2:257), patron and guardian of the faithful.
The adjudicated finding in this corpus: the cluster gives a real, morally discriminating account of divine love — God eternally and non-affectively approves, praises, accepts, favours, protects, and rewards faithful creatures, while humans love God through reverent obedience and self-giving action. That is more than a bare capacity. It is not eternally actual, equal-to-equal interpersonal communion.
Why it matters: the EO claim that perfect love is reciprocal self-giving communion (condilectio) has to be argued as a necessary divine perfection, not assumed as the only meaning of "perfect love." The Māturīdī cluster is the live alternative that does real theological work without it — approval, favour, and protection running downward, obedience running upward.
The mistaken everyday reading is "Islam has no doctrine of divine love." It has a detailed one; the dispute is about its shape, not its existence.