Nastaliq's religious use, while real, sits somewhat differently within Islamic devotional practice than the more purely liturgical Arabic scripts, since its primary historical home was Persian poetry and secular chancery documents rather than the Qur'an itself, which Persian speaking Muslims have generally continued to copy and read in Arabic script traditions such as naskh and thuluth even while writing their own devotional and mystical poetry, much of it explicitly Sufi in content and inspiration, in nastaliq.
Illuminated Persian manuscripts pairing nastaliq calligraphy with miniature painting, produced in royal and princely workshops, kitabkhanas, across the Safavid, Mughal and other Persianate courts, brought the script into close and enduring partnership with figurative religious and courtly art in a way distinct from the generally aniconic tradition surrounding Arabic Qur'anic calligraphy. Nastaliq remains today the standard script for printed and handwritten Persian, and it continues in wide devotional use for Sufi poetry, for the inscription of shrines and tombs of revered Sufi masters and poets across Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia and South Asia, and for Urdu religious literature across Pakistan and the South Asian Muslim world, a living script bridging literary, artistic and devotional purposes across a broad Persianate cultural sphere.