Yusuf received his primary religious education from his father. After finishing middle school in 1970, he attended the Mir-i Arab madrassa in Bukhara. He then studied at the Tashkent Islamic Institute in Tashkent, finishing with distinction in 1975. He then edited the journal, Muslims of the east of the Soviet Union. In 1976, Yusuf was admitted to ad-Dawa al-Islami National Islamic University in Libya, which he finished with distinction and a financial award. This period of study exposed him to a future generation of Muslim imams, mostly from the Arabic world but even reaching to places as far away as Japan. Yusuf was elected mufti by the SADUM in March 1989, and in the same year he was elected as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Sheikh presented a report to the former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev explaining the problems of Muslims rights in the protocol. He asked to return Muslims their rights to pray, to learn the religion. In Yusuf’s meeting with Gorbachev, positive changes have been seen in the policy towards the religion in the communist regime. With Yusuf’s efforts, numerous mosques and madrassas were built in the Soviet Union. The Muslims were allowed to follow their religious traditions and ceremonies. In 1997 Yusuf was put in charge of Muslim countries and federations of the Commonwealth of Independent States within Rabita al-Alam al-Islami, an international Islamic organization in Saudi Arabia. He was a permanent member of the governing council of this organization.
Death
Yusuf died on 10 March 2015 after suffering a heart attack.
Writings
From 1994 to 2000 he published approximately thirty popular articles and twenty-five books and pamphlets. Most were written in Uzbek, and some were translated into Russian. The main publisher was the Kara Su branch of the press of the Islamic cultural center in Osh. His books include: Tafsiri Hilal, Hadith wa Hayot, Ruhiy tarbiya, Kifoya, and many other books, booklets, audio and video materials in Islam and translations of Imaam Al Buhariy's famous books into Uzbek language. In his books since 2002 he included the following credo at the beginning, in the style of an Islamic movement that is seeking to transcend the divisions within the faith:
