The Quran

أَم لَهُم شُرَكاءُ شَرَعوا لَهُم مِنَ الدّينِ ما لَم يَأذَن بِهِ اللَّهُ ۚ وَلَولا كَلِمَةُ الفَصلِ لَقُضِيَ بَينَهُم ۗ وَإِنَّ الظّالِمينَ لَهُم عَذابٌ أَليمٌ

Muhammad Asad

Is it that they [who care for no more than this world] believe in forces supposed to have a share in God's divinity,¹ which enjoin upon them as a moral law something that God has never allowed?² Now were it not for [God's] decree on the final judgment,³ all would indeed have been decided between them [in this world]:⁴ but, verily, grievous suffering awaits the evildoers [in the life to come].

Lit., "Is it that they have partners [of God]" - i.e., "do they believe that circumstantial phenomena like wealth, power, 'luck', etc.., have something divine about them?" - the implication being that belief in such "forces" is usually at the root of men's pursuance of exclusively worldly ends. (For my above explanatory rendering of the term shuraka' - lit., "partners" or "associates" [of God] - see note 15 on 6:22.)
I.e., which cause them to abandon themselves with an almost religious fervour to something of which God disapproves - namely, the striving after purely materialistic goals and a corresponding disregard of all spiritual and ethical values. For my rendering of din, in this context, as "moral law", see note 3 on 109:6.
Lit., "word of decision"; i.e., that His final judgment shall be postponed until the Day of Resurrection (see next note).
I.e., God would have made a clear-cut distinction, in this world, between those who look forward to the hereafter and those who care for no more than worldly success, by granting unlimited happiness to the former and causing the latter to suffer: but since it is only in the hereafter that man's life is to be truly fulfilled, God has willed to postpone this distinction until then.