Religion, culture, “discursive tradition” (Asad/Metcalf)

Nice and clear, Barbara Daly Metcalf (Making Muslim Space, 1996), p. 4 :

Muslims and Muslims precisely in the sense that’s they are people who, across time and placé engage with what Talal Asad (1986) calls “a discursive tradition” created by the interaction with sacred texts and which the history of that interaction.

But then the cristallisation of sacredness on the texts, and the long discursive event of the Revelation, to start with. Why a religious mode, is still my perplexity.