Mary Boewe, in her essay "How Mark Twain Found God in India", wrote of Twain's meeting with God:

The first encounter took place in Bombay when Twain’s bearer, whom he had

earlier dubbed “Satan,” ceremoniously ushered “God” into the author’s presence. This

so-called God was a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed and a mere youth of 18,

known as Sultan Muhammet Shah Aga Khan III, the spiritual head of the Ismaeli sect.

The revered leader should have been garbed in cloth of gold and ornate headgear, but

Mark Twain only says that “every detail of his person and his dress had a consuming

interest for me.” Twain admitted he was “in a suppressed frenzy of excitement and

curiosity and glad wonder” for he was “looking upon a god, an actual god, a recognized

and accepted god.” This god was also the “Awful Visitor” who had read Huck Finn’s

Adventures and now eagerly discussed the book’s philosophy, “luminously” presenting

“a compact and nicely-discriminated literary verdict,” according to Twain.

Years later, the Aga Khan described their notable meeting in his autobiography:

“I spent a whole afternoon in [Mark Twain’s] company and finished by having dinner

with him at Watson’s Hotel in Bombay.” (In his 1896 journal, Twain wrote that the

hotel’s French chef, named O’Shaughnessy, had served him Irish stew “under 14

different French names.”) Try to visualize those two famous and physically distinct

personages as they were simultaneously eating a chowdery bouillabaisse and discussing

the scruffy hero of Twain’s controversial book. Mark Twain was impressed by the poised

adolescent—so impressed that he judged him to be at least 35 years old! That misnamed

“God” was equally impressed by Mark Twain: “He seemed to me dear, gentle and

saintly, sad and immensely modest for so great and famous a genius,” the Aga Khan

remembered.

For a Hindu servant to address this Muslim leader as “God” is not surprising; that

Mark Twain—obviously delighted with the Satan-God juxtaposition—would publish this

little joke shows either ignorance or insensitivity. In Islam, there is only one God—Allah.

Thus Muslims are monotheistic, like Jews and Christians; furthermore, Islam forbids any

depiction of Allah in human form, as the Aga Khan well knew.