The subsequent public debates across Europe centred on the question whether fundamental cultural differences ascribed to these groups coming to Western countries could ever be bridged. The aftermath of the sexual assaults and harassment of many women in Cologne on New-Year’s eve 2015 by men presented as Muslim and/or Arab refugees and immigrants in various media 1 serves as a striking example of this. Sexuality and gender have been focal points in recent discussions of the position of Islamic immigrants and refugees in Western societies, especially following the large number of Syrian refugees seeking asylum in different European countries over the past few years. It is argued that a sexual self is actively negotiated and created through embracing, rejecting and transgressing modernity, which enables the interlocutors to position themselves in different fields of socio-cultural or religious belonging. Based on an ethnographic research conducted between 20, the Iranian Dutch’ perceptions of specific sexual issues are analysed as vehicles to sexual self-fashioning. As an alternative to this dominant perception of change in which modernity is seen as an indicator of cultural progression, this paper proposes the concept of sexual self-fashioning to investigate the diasporic articulations of sexuality in various discursive uses of modernity as investments in processes of subjectivity. This approach attributes an assumed progression from a traditional past to a modern present to the Iranian immigrants, and determines simultaneously the extent of their integration into the ‘host’ culture. Prevailing academic analyses of sexuality in the Iranian diaspora focus on the willingness and ability to embrace ‘modern’ notions of sexual liberty, individual self-fulfilment and gender equality. Modernity figures prominently in understanding change in diasporic sexual cultures, particularly when it comes to Muslim immigrants living in Western countries.