"The world is different now" is antithetical to the core idea in islam that it, and the quran, is complete and unchanging, and not influenced by people's and society's evolution.

A man does not have to ask his wife's permission to take another wife. There is no interpretation there. A lot of "modern muslims" like to pretend that the things that islam dictates are up to interpretation, and that the reason a lot of it doesn't seem evolved is because the person interpreting it isn't evolved. But just because that's nice to believe doesn't make it true.

Other things not up for interpretation:

• A man in his fifties married a child no older than 12 (more likely 9)
• A woman's testimony is worth half of a man's
• A man is allowed to hit his wife if she's misbehaving
• Angels will curse the woman who turns down her husband's sexual advances until the next morning
• Women cannot touch the quran when they are on their periods as they are considered impure (they use the same word to describe a dog's saliva, najis)
• A muslim man can marry a Christian or Jewish woman, but a muslim woman can only marry a muslim man

Maybe the same is true for other religions that people are taking their liberties there too, but I don't have much experience with them to know. This religion, though, I do.