Temporal, mystic and religious love: The Poetry of the Taliban

Mina, Mohabbat and ishq are three pashto words used to name two kinds of love. The first is more human while the second is divine or mystical. In this paper I have tried to analyse the poetry of the Taliban, paying special attention to the question of the aforementioned kinds of love: human, divine and religous. I decided to do that because until now most of the researchers working on the Talibanʼs songs have focussed more on their political, propaganda and religious message, with very little work dedicated to its ‘human’ character. This is why I have presented several poems selected from the collection Poetry of the Taliban by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn (Gurgaon 2012) and enhanced my study with some comments.