Arabic character alef cannot be rendered on MacOS X
A rectangle is displayed instead.

The behavior affects Java SE 9 only.
Java SE 8 is fine: Java 1.8.0_66 was tried.

The behaviour is strictly reproducible.

Here is a reproducer:

% more FontDrawingTest.java
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;

public class FontDrawingTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(() -> {
            JFrame frame = new JFrame("Test");
            frame.add(new MyComponent());
            frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
            frame.setSize(200, 200);
            frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
            frame.setVisible(true);
        });
    }

    private static class MyComponent extends JComponent {
        private final Font font = new Font("Menlo", Font.ITALIC, 100);
        private final String text = "\u0627"; // Arabic letter alef

        @Override
        protected void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
            if (font.canDisplayUpTo(text) == -1) {
                g.setColor(Color.black);
                g.setFont(font);
                g.drawString(text, 70, 110);
            }
        }
    }
}