How do I cite the Qur'an in an academic paper?

Here are some considerations.

As with all questions about citation, everything depends on the style manual you are using. Find much more on these considerations here.

'Qur'an' is the proper Library of Congress English transliteration of القرآن. The Qur'an consists of 114 chapters, or "surahs," varying in length from 3 to 286 verses (ayat). Like other scared texts with standardized numbering systems, it is considered correct, even in papers where you otherwise use footnotes, to use parenthetical references for verses of the Qur'an.

For surah-verse citations, if you are using a translation, the standard is as follows, with the translator "Nasr" named in the example here:

(Q. 2:54-57, Nasr, 124-5)

That is: the abbreviation Q for Qur'an, then chapter number, then verse numbers, then author's last name, then pages on which this verse is found in the translation.

If you are not using a translation but simply the Qur'an text directly, the citation would be:

(Q. 2:54-57).