Arabic

[Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@xxxxxxx>]

I remember back when I was getting Chinese stuffed into my head
24/7 by the military I had friends taking Arabic.  One of the
common jokes they made was about how every idea seemed to be
required to have a reference to Allah.  I'm sure they were
exaggerating somewhat, but it just struck me.  What if the
references to Allah were replaced by a gallows character or
encoded with the various aiin bothers?  In a Christian setting
they might be replaced even in an enciphered text because of
fear of a heresy charge and to a non-arab, they are almost
meaningless background noise, except that they sometimes serve
as markers for things like tense (I think).  I was told that
future tense could be expressed 'if Allah wills it'.  I don't
really know much about Arabic except the complaints I heard from
people who started adding 'humdilluh' to every English phrase as
a joke.  Does anyone out there know enough about Arabic to tell
me if this is a valid idea?  Are there any similar things in
other languages?
Regards,
Brian