For the MESA 2020 symposium panel, "Towards an Alternative Framework: Gender, Sexuality, and Queerness in Contemporary Islamic Art," I propose re-approaching interpretations of gender/sexuality in historic Islamic art. In this presentation I study the existing literature on Middle Eastern diasporic communities and bring queer identity into theoretical discussion with diaspora studies, creating a new framework for analysis. These ideas culminate in a consideration of works by Syrian-American visual artist, Jamil Hellu, who explores non-western ways of being queer that are informed by diaspora consciousness, a sociological and psychological component to diaspora studies. There is an incompatibility with how diasporic subjects are socialized to become queer subjects in the West and the conflicting, often contradictory, values and understandings of their own sexual desires from a cultural perspective. The artwork of Jamil Hellu provides significant examples of how local networks of identity are transmitted through visual language and how alternative sexuality scripts can be written. I trace links between colonial discourses in pre-Modern Arab-Islamic regions and art by contemporary diasporic artists, challenging norms around gender/sexuality and their sustained colonial histories. Diasporic artists provide a rich platform to investigate the relationship of both colonial trauma and displacement within the queer Middle Eastern community, and how the conception of homeland complicates a transnational sexual identity. Studying the cultural production of the queer diaspora is fruitful in investigating the ways in which we can reach a narrative of Western and non-Western Modernity that works beyond the clichés of sexual oppression (Middle East) versus sexual acceptance (North America).