Insha'allah!

You can't go 10 minutes in Cairo without hearing the phrase "Insha'allah" or "God-willing." (It literally means "if it is the will of God"). If you mention anything in the future, or with an uncertain outcome, Insha'allah better trail that answer or you run the risk of jinxing yourself, a bit like refusing to knock on wood.

This article from the International Herald Tribune writes about the ubiquitous word and its cultural significance. http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/19/africa/20inshallah.php?page=1

My favorite excerpts are:

Egyptians have always been religious, from Pharaonic times to the present. Any guidebook to Egypt alerts tourists to Egyptians' frequent use of inshallah in discussing future events, a signal of their deep faith and belief that all events occur, or don't occur, at God's will. "See you tomorrow," is almost always followed by a smile and, "inshallah."

But there has been inshallah creep, to the extreme. It is now attached to the answer for any question, past, present and future. What's your name, for example, might be answered, "Muhammad, inshallah."

"I say to them, 'You are already Muhammad or you are going to be Muhammad?' " said Attiat el-Abnoudy, a documentary filmmaker in Cairo.

... (The article goes on to explain the rising importance of religious symbols to both the pious and the secularized people, as Islam becomes ever-more the cornerstone of cultural identity)...

But it is not just about faith in the celestial, that has people invoking God. It is also, at least for some, a lack of faith in the earthbound rulers who run the place. People here are tired — of the rising prices and the eroding wages, of the traffic, of the corruption, of the sense that it is every man for himself.

"In this place, when something works, or you want something to work, you thank God, because it's certainly not the government who is going to help you," said Sherif Issa, 48, a taxi driver in Cairo with a nicotine-stained mustache and a fair size belly. "It's because everything is going in the wrong direction — who can we look up to except God?"