A standing-room-only audience packed the Holmes Student Center’s Lincoln Room Thursday night for a lecture from Jon Alterman.

Alterman, a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff, spoke for about an hour to the roughly 75-person audience about what’s happening in the world of Islam and what people can do about it.

Alterman is an expert on the Middle East and terrorism, among other things, who has taught at Harvard University and is a program officer on leave from the Research and Studies Program at the United States Institute of Peace.

“I don’t know what to expect; I just want to find out what’s going on,” sophomore theater major Scott Piner said before the speech. “I just think it’s something we need to understand so we can deal with it on a religion and political basis.”

After a speech earlier in the day to the Institute for Learning in Retirement, Alterman simply summarized his piece, which is the first of eight sessions like it on campus discussing issues related to Islam.

“I talked a little about where Islamic law comes from and what it says,” he said.

After explaining how Islam works, Alterman described how it is difficult enough for the U.S. to deal with non-governmental groups, but when it comes to religion, it becomes even more difficult. He said this culture is not used to giving religion special treatment.

Alterman went on to say that there needs to be more moderate Muslims to speak out against radicals.

He also discussed how technology caused a historically significant transition for Islam, partly because of the digitizing of texts and the fact that people have access to multiple sources that claim religious authority, like Osama bin Laden. He also mentioned how increased literacy because of technology means that religious texts are no longer restricted to the urban elite.

Alterman also made suggestions of what people can do to combat terrorism. He said we need to act vigorously against those who take arms against us,”but the battle cannot be fought only with weapons. It must also be fought with intelligence and monetary cooperation.”

Alterman continued, saying, “our battle is not with Islam,” but the battle is within Islam. He added that “our battle” is with those terrorists who use their religion for the wrong purposes.

Some were glad to listen to the expert’s words.

“He came and talked to the Institute for Learning in Retirement [earlier Thursday] and was answering questions about the Middle East,” said Maureen Russle, a member of the League of Women Voters. “He seems very astute in this area.”

However, not everyone agreed with Alterman’s ideas.

“Because he doesn’t have knowledge of the Islamic faith, he was unable to balance his authority of United States policies,” said Saad Quadri, who is president of the Muslim Student Association and a sophomore English major. “Thus, [he was] failing in properly explaining the theme of the night, which was Islam and America.”

Alterman is the author of a monograph titled, “New Media, New Politics? From Satellite Television to the Internet in the Arab World.” He also has written a variety of academic and popular articles concerning major political and social developments in the Middle East, according to www.usip.org.

Also according to the site, his areas of specialization are: the Middle East, Arab-Israeli relations, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, information and communications technology, negotiation and mediation, terrorism and low-intensity conflict and U.S. foreign policy.

He is a frequent commentator on U.S. policy and th Middle East in print, on radio and on television. His opinion pieces have appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Asharq al-Awsat, and other major publications. Alterman is on the Board of Advisory Editors of the Middle East Journal, and recently was awarded an international affairs fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations.

Assistant campus editor Jenan Diab contributed to this report.