ضَرَبَ ٱللَّهُ مَثَلًا رَّجُلًا فِيهِ شُرَكَآءُ مُتَشَٰكِسُونَ وَرَجُلًا سَلَمًا لِّرَجُلٍ هَلْ يَسْتَوِيَانِ مَثَلًا
"God has set forth an example: a man in the hands of partners quarrelling with one another, and a man surrendered wholly to one man. Are the two of them equal as an example?"
The example is taken from the life of that day: a slave with more than one owner, and a slave with a single owner.
مُتَشَٰكِسُون — root ش-ك-س: ill-tempered, hard to get on with, quarrelling. Form VI: mutual quarrelling. The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.
The work the parable does is worth recording, and I give it as my own reading: the verse does not argue the theoretical wrongness of multiplicity — it shows its practical outcome. A man with more than one owner cannot know whom to act by; each wants something different, and he can fully satisfy none of them.
That is, the matter is taken out of being a dispute about belief and made a matter of direction. And this matches the command in the second verse of the sūra: mukhliṣan lahu'd-dīn — the sorting out of the mixture.
سَلَمًا لِّرَجُلٍ — "surrendered to one man". The root س-ل-م — the practical counterpart of the concept of ikhlāṣ at the centre of the sūra is given here with the word surrender.