If dominant theories about the evolution of national literatures tend to rely on European historical models, according to which vernacular literary forms emerged from a Latin ecumenical tradition, how might the comparative study of vernacular literatures emerging from an Arabic liturgical tradition modify prevailing theoretical models? This paper considers several possibilities for reframing the comparative study of vernacular literatures from within an Arabic scriptural and liturgical context, both within and beyond the Middle East. It explores the political and cultural legacy of Arabic as a sacralized language, underscoring its changing symbolic value across the twentieth century in West African, Southeast Asian, and Middle Eastern contexts. In considering these issues, the paper considers the extent to which a common linguistic situation—the preservation of the Arabic language (and script) as a sacred, religious medium, and the politicization of Arabic during the late colonial period—influenced the evolution of literatures in three national cases with distinct imperial legacies: Senegal, controlled by the French, Indonesia by the Dutch, and Egypt by the Ottoman Empire and subsequently by the British Empire. Engaging with Arabic as a changing cultural symbol, as one choice among many for post-colonial writing across several regions, this paper examines how the transnational presence of Arabic illuminates the formation of national and postcolonial literatures in ways that contrast with the formation of vernacular, European literatures evolving from a Latin ecumenical context. The paper begins by tracing how the Arabic language became (in the 19th and early 20th century) a subject of political controversy across three regions and within different Imperial territories, with varying effects on the regional sustainment of the Arabic script, on the fate of local vernaculars, and on the parameters of Arabic language use in public and official domains. After tracing these developments, the paper focuses on three writers who emerged as influential literary and religious figures within their respective regional contexts (Bamba, Hamka, Qutb), writers who responded to perceived imperial coercions with a common call or tendency, a call to uphold liturgical Arabic as a shared symbol of transregional or transnational Islamic solidarity. Their writing, however, also exhibits an enduring tension between the privileging of Arabic as a liturgical language of universal vocation and the necessity to accommodate ethnic and vernacular differences within a transregional ecumene.