Disqus on pre-JSON supported versions of PHP doesn’t support Unicode

Disqus’ API supports Unicode nicely.

If you’re using an old version of PHP however (before json_decode was added), then you won’t be getting this support using the Disqus PHP client libraries. That is because the json library bundled with Disqus as a fallback for older PHP versions doesn’t support unicode at all (it simply strips the \ character leaving you a bunch of crap like u064au0645 u064au0645 u0648u0648u0648u0627u0648u0648u0648.

You have two choices - upgrade PHP, or replace Disqus’ fallback json library with something that works. I switched out the json library for one I use elsewhere on my site, and it works great now.