If you’ve never heard of Subud, you’re not alone. With fewer than 10,000 members and headquarters in Indonesia, this is not a group that gets or seeks much attention. With outposts in Hawaii and Chicago and some at least peripheral incursions into American politics, Subud could have been an intriguing little footnote in American politics.
But it is going to become a major rabbit hole.
Subud was founded in Indonesia in the 1920s by a Muslim-born man named Muhammad Subuh Sumohadiwidjojo, who fortunately preferred the honorific term Bapak, which I will use here (pictured above). Bapak means Father, but in a formal way, like Patriarch or Sir. The movement was born from an ecstatic experience by Bapak who created the movement’s logo shown above as seven concentric circles. Most of the official practices of Subud—which sees itself as compatible with any religion or spiritual practice—is called “laithan” which combines a period of meditative stillness with subsequent free-flowing movements.
The official principles of Subud seem benign. If there is anything wild-eyed radical to Subud, I have not found it. It seems to be a small, tightly knit group of people who gather for spiritual exercises. About the most wild thing that Subud members do is take on a new name—but only if they want to.
While Subud may seem alien in the United States, David and Patricia Arquette grew up with Subud parents and have talked about these experiences. While the Arquettes do not appear to be involved in Subud anymore, they described growing up around Subud in positive terms.
Bapak died in 1987 and left behind a small organization with a website that lists their address as 5828 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. The audited financial statement for the Subud organization in the United States in 2021 shows assets of under $1 million. Whether by nature or design, they go to a lot of trouble to look insignificant.
This is not to say that Subud has not had some unusual brushes with politics.
One involved an American woman living in Hawaii by the name of Loretta Fuddy who joined Subud (pictured above). As is the practice in Subud, she took a new name and called herself Deliana Fuddy. If I were her, I would have changed Fuddy and not Loretta, but to each their own. But Deliana Fuddy, aka Loretta Fuddy, used both names moving forward. She even took a new birthday—so she has two birthdays used in official paperwork. Fuddy had earned a degree in public health from the University of Chicago. Over the years, she rose through the ranks of Subud and was the international chairwoman of the organization from 2006 to 2008. In 2011, Fuddy was named Director of the State Department of Health for Hawaii, a position that typically goes to a medical doctor and not an academic. Normally people who do work at the level of Loretta Fuddy are not noticed in national politics. Up until Obama got elected, Fuddy was living the life of an obscure but successful bureaucrat.
On December 12, 2013, Fuddy met with a mysterious death. She was making an island-to-island flight on a small plane in Hawaii—a very typical commuter flight for that state—and the plane made an emergency landing in the water. The cause for this has never been investigated. The landing was controlled; it was not a crash. All of the nine people on board, including Fuddy, safely exited the plane and had a life vest. One of the passengers had a video and there are some limited recordings of the survivors bobbing in the water. The pilot called for help which arrived quickly, but when they got there, Fuddy was dead. She was the only person who did not survive.
The cause of death was ruled an arrhythmia. While that is plausible, there is no way to prove an arrhythmic death on autopsy. Of course, that shouldn’t matter since Fuddy either did not have an autopsy or the findings were never released. At least one other newspaper report said she died of heart failure. The family said that 65-year-old Fuddy had no known heart disease.
Ironically, the Maui Fire Department rescued several of the survivors—after recent events, I was not sure Maui even had a fire department.
The accident was newsworthy at the time because Fuddy was also the woman who signed that she witnessed the copying of Barack Obama’s official “long form” birth certificate. The Department of Health keeps the vital statistics and it was Fuddy’s job during the years of the “birther controversy” to grant permission and sign off on a certified, official, no-kidding, this-is-it birth certificate. She was the keeper of these documents and when it was decided to release the long-form birth certificate, Fuddy was the woman in charge of making sure everything was kosher.
It has been reported that at the time of her death there was a sealed indictment which suggested that perhaps not only was the long-form birth certificate forged, but that she had committed a serious crime by signing off on it. The sealed affidavit was filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle and it alleged misprision of felony and treason. In case you are not a serious criminal, the word misprision means deliberately hiding one’s knowledge of a treasonous act. The indictment has never been unsealed or made public.
Subsequent financial investigations found that Fuddy—who earned less than $100,000 a year at her job—made a big cash payment on her mortgage in 2013. The amount she paid down on her mortgage far exceeded her salary, but no investigation ever was conducted to determine where the money came from. In fact, that story more or less faded from the public as quickly as it arose. Again, it is not evidence. She could have come into money from an inheritance or the lottery or used a lifetime of savings.
So did Fuddy just die in a weird accident after almost paying off her house? Or is there some connection between her work, the birth certificate, and her untimely death?
Enter Stanley Ann Dunham, Barack Obama’s birth mother. Let’s call her Ann, a name she used throughout her life, although her real name was Stanley Ann. (Obama’s mother and his maternal grandfather were both named Stanely—it gets confusing.) According to her biography, A Singular Woman, Ann not only knew about Subud, she had many friends in the group. Some say she was a member, but I have never seen any proof of that. Of course, Subud was not the sort of organization with rigorous membership protocols; it seems as if some people drifted in and out of the group as they were inclined. What is established is that Ann knew about Subud and was on good terms with some of their members. During her years in Indonesia, Ann got a grant from the Ford Foundation to set up an English-language school. Some of the people she hired in this enterprise were Subud members.
Did Ann Dunham (Obama’s mother) know Loretta Fuddy? There is no proof of this but it is possible they crossed paths.
All of this brings that weird Obama “birther” controversy back into the spotlight. Many people, particularly on the left, act like even mentioning the Obama’s birth certificate is a form of racism or xenophobia or even some sort of attempt to overthrow the government. I think asking where a president was born is a fair question. Here’s why.
Obama had the most unusual and international upbringing of any major political figure in history. He was born of an American mother and a Kenyan father—at the time, Kenya was ruled by Great Britain, so Barack Obama, Sr. actually held a British passport. Barack spent many years of his elementary school days in Indonesia until his mother brought him back to Hawaii to her parents to raise. Barack spent none of his childhood in the contiguous United States. These exotic locales—he spent some time in his college years in Pakistan as well—are no crime. Being raised outside the United States does not disqualify one from political office. Barack’s exotic childhood experiences may simply be the result of being the son of an anthropologist who traveled far and often for her work. But they do create a past history that is unusual, and that’s why the question as to where Obama was born is legitimate.
Which brings us back to Subud. Are they involved in the controversy at all? Did Fuddy knowingly sign off on a forged document? Was Fuddy complicit in the forgery? Or was the document legitimate and all of this was just a weird accident?
The location of Obama’s birth may not be nearly as crucial or determinative as some think. His possible Indonesian citizenship is. Obama was brought to Indonesia while he was in elementary school. His mother, Ann, had married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesia citizen. During their time in Indonesia, Barack took Soetoro’s last name and enrolled in a school there as Barry Soetoro, the son of Lolo Soetoro. (He was also enrolled in school as a Muslim, but that’s another story.) Under Indonesian law, as I understand it, being adopted by an Indonesian would automatically confer Indonesian citizenship on the boy. While America allows for dual citizenship for mere citizens—that is, Obama may have been both an Indonesian and a United States citizen—the Presidency does not. Obama could have remedied this easily by renouncing his Indonesian citizenship.
There’s no record he ever did that. So the real “birther” controversy may be moot or at least somewhat mootified. He may have been disqualified due to dual citizenship. But the mysterious past of Barack Obama remains.
The Subud rabbit hole goes deeper, but this is enough for today.