 A highly-controversial figure, following a particularly fundamentalist strain of Islam that is not shared by most Chechens, he is currently one of the ideologues and the main propagandist behind the Caucasus Emirate (a Pan-Islamic militant movement that is rejecting the idea of a merely independent Chechen state in favor of an Islamic state encompassing most of the Russia's North Caucasus and based on Islamic Sharia law).From 1983 to 1988, Udugov studied in Checheno-Ingushetia State University.Since 1988, was editor in chief of the newspaper "Orientir", which was banned by the regional committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989.