“Muslims are looking for a leader who can unite them.”
Nationalism in Muslim dominant countries, like Egypt, Pakistan, and many others is far stronger than Islamists seeking a “supreme” leader of all Muslims. Theocracies like the Mullahs of Tehran, and the Al Queda types may hold such a view but it is not a universal view among all Muslims. Why? Their peoples in all Muslim nations know the history of that idea brought them centuries of wars between competitors for that title. Even now the Mullahs of Tehran are known among Muslims as reviving such wars. And while most of those wars between Muslims was spread across the Middle East the largest national Muslim population is in Indoneesia which has a secretic Islamic practice with some flavoring from older religious traditions there.
I think Islam could finally be at the beginning of an inflection point, like Christianity went through (after centuries of religious wars in Europe), where folks get tired of bleeding and bleeding away their children in religious wars. It may not be there yet, and it took Christianity a long time too, but it could happen.