From the beginning of the twentieth century, the Qur’an was increasingly framed in a novel way: as part of humanity’s literary heritage, or “world literature.” Qur’an translations became part of the portfolio of publishers such as Penguin in Britain (N.J. Dawood), Reclam in Germany (Max Henning) and Gallimard in France (Denise Masson, as part of the Bibliothèque de la Pleïade). This made them part of a portfolio that purported to represent the peak cultural products of the world’s “cultures,” rather than a religious scripture that would provide insight into Islam. The Qur’an was advertised to a mass market alongside the Bhagavad Gita, the Arabian Nights and the Dream of the Red Chamber. This brought forth a number of different but distinctive approaches. One approach to positioning the Qur’an as world literature was a focus on “authorship” which led to the attempt to imagine Muḥammad’s emotions and motives in the liveliest way possible, interpreting the Qur’an as an expression of his angst, his passions and triumphs (Henning). Another approach was the presentation of the text in terms of its literary value, without regard for either the canonical order or chronology, to convince readers of its aesthetic dimension (Dawood). A third approach was the attempt to enhance intercultural understanding by emphasizing the common human experience and themes that may be identified in different religious scriptures (Masson). From the history of the translations by Dawood, Henning and Masson, all of which enjoyed considerable success, we can see that the presentation of the Qur’an as a de-sacralized part of the world’s literary heritage was increasingly challenged from the 1980s onwards, and this was clearly related to the demographic changes in Western European societies. An increasing number of Muslims were living in Britain, France and Germany, and there was a demand for Qur’an translations which was not met by monolingual editions that framed the Qur’an as one of the more exotic components of world literature. In the 1980s, a Lebanese publisher printed a bilingual French-Arabic edition of Masson’s translation that was lent authority by the supposed editorial work of a Sunni sheikh, Sobhi Saleh. In 1990 Penguin published a new bilingual English-Arabic edition of Dawood’s translation in the canonical order of suras. And in the 1990s, two different Turkish publishers printed German-Arabic revised editions of the Henning translation. As this paper will show, the framing of Qur’an translations as works of literature and the subsequent shift towards observant Muslim audiences tells us much about the position of the Qur’an in Western European societies throughout the twentieth century, and the paper will take a close look at the features and mechanisms that contributed to either framing.