Latex also supports Arab characters, and not only that it also supports Jawi (Malay flavors of Arabic characters). Called Arabtex, it was developed by Prof. Klaus Lagally at the University of Stuggart.
For the character mapping on how to make the Jawi characters appear on screen, you can refer here
Say we have the following
%specifying class
\documentclass{article}
%calling arabtex package.. you may need to install texlive-lang-arab
\usepackage{arabtex}
\begin{document}
%initializing Jawi char map
\setmalay
%since Jawi does not need vocalization
\novocalize
\huge
%I leave it blank, except date for header
\title{ <>}
\author{}
\date{<2009>}
\maketitle
%This is Jawi mode
%Now let's see for Arab
\setarab
\fullvocalize
%This will enable transliteration, automatically!
\transtrue
\arabtrue
%Right to Left text will be append
\begin {RLtext}
al-salAm `alaykum\\
bismi al-ll_ahi al-rra.hm_ani al-rra.hImi
\end{RLtext}
\end{document}
Now let's see the output!
