No, Indonesian Islamic Defenders Front leader Rizieq Shihab has not died

The image of Shihab's alleged dead body wrapped in a traditional Muslim burial cloth has been shared thousands of times since it first appeared in early 2018.

Online news portal martirnkri.com was one of a number of websites that published the photo. It did so as part of an article headlined: "Snap! FPI Imam Habib Shihab reported dead, is it true?" FPI is the Indonesian acronym for the Islamic Defenders Front.

The accompanying article declared the photo to be a hoax, but other posts such as this by News Republik said he died on February 6, 2018.

However a Google reverse image search shows the photo has been digitally manipulated, with similar versions showing other people to have allegedly died appearing on the internet as far back as 2008.

In July of that year, for example, a blog published a nearly identical photo but with an image of a smiling woman wrapped in a white burial cloth. She is surrounded by people wearing the same clothes and gesturing in the same way as those who appear in the doctored image of Shihab.

The precise source of the image is unclear, as there appears to be dozens of unattributed photos online.

The head of the FPI's legal team, Sugito Atmo Pawiro, also confirmed to AFP in a telephone interview in June 2018 that Shihab had not died in February.

“He is still alive. God willing, he is healthy,” Pawiro told AFP.

Shihab fled Indonesia to Saudi Arabia in 2017 after being named as a suspect in a pornography case. Those charges have since been dropped.