This article offers a comparative study of everyday sexual ethics among Dutch Sunni Muslim and evangelical Christian young adults, both those born into religious families and those converted later in life. In European public debates, the sexual values of observant Christians and – especially – observant Muslims, are commonly understood to deviate from progressive norms. Particularly for Muslims, this has become a ground for questioning their belonging to the moral nation. Our ethnographic analysis complicates these conventional representations, which are partly reflected in quantitative survey research. We argue that the sexual ethics of the young Muslims and Christians we studied are multi-layered, situational, and dialogical. Discussing the convergences and divergences between these groups, we point to a paradox: while Muslims tend to be set apart as sexually ‘other’, the young Christians we worked with – and to a lesser extent the converted Muslims – put strikingly more effort into distinguishing themselves from, and criticising, dominant sexual norms.

This article focuses on the triangulation of sexuality, religion and secularity in Dutch society by analysing two contemporary case studies. We focus on sexual experiences and practices rather than sexual identities to further understand the constructions of what constitutes 'good' sex. The empirical research is situated in the Netherlands, where the binary of religion and sexual regulation versus secularity and sexual freedom has been dominant in both public and political discourse for a long time. Exploring sexual practices and narratives as central to the constitution of both religious and secular selves, we noted these to be fluctuating, inconsistent and subject to discourses. Our first case study discusses sexual experiences of non-heterosexual Protestant women, whereas the second explores the frequently considered 'neutral' notions of secularity in sexual education. Applying insights from both religious studies and queer studies, we bring the empirical study of sexuality together with the theoretical debates about the conceptualisation of the secular and the religious in contemporary Western Europe. This comparative approach to sexuality not only undermines the culturally presumed exclusive opposition of the secular and the religious but it also provides new empirical contributions for understanding the interactions between sexual practices and sexual discourses.